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LEADING OPINIONS 

BOTH FOR AND AGAINST 

NATIONAL DEFENSE 

A SYMPOSIUM OF OPINIONS OF EMINENT LEADERS 

OF AMERICAN THOUGHT ON THE SUKTECT OF 

OUR NEEDS FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE 

COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY 

HUDSON MAXIM 



A HANDBOOK AND GUIDE FOR DEBATERS AND PUBLIC 
SPEAKERS PRESENTING BOTH SIDES OF THE QUES- 
TION WITH ABSOLUTE IMPARTIALITY 




COMPLIMENTS OF HUDSON MAXIM 

1916 






PUBLISHERS' NOTICE 

Hudson Maxim's books on National 
Defense may be ordered through book- 
sellers or from his publishers, as follows : 

Defenseless America, Library Edition, 
Extra Cloth p^.^^ $2.00 

(By mail 15 cents extra) 



Defenseless America, Popular Edi- 
tion, Complete, Cloth Binding 

Price 50 cents 
(By mail 10 cents extra) 



Leading Opinions Both For and 

Against National Defense. Cloth 
Binding p^.^^ 5^ ^^^^^ 

(By mail 10 cents extra) 

Descriptive Circular Free On Request 

Hearst's International Library Co. 

119 West 40th Street New York 



Copyright, 1916, by 
Hudson Maxim 

'". W. K0 3 4 
iiEP '-i {919 



FOREWORD 

At this time, when the people of the other great nations of the world 
are destroying one another's property, robbing one another and cutting one 
another's throats, it is only natural that the people of this country should 
begin to inquire about our ability to protect our homes from destruction, 
our property from plunder, and our throats from being cut, in the event 
of our being drawn into this war, or into a war with any of the belligerent 
nations after the present war is over. 

The people are asking questions of those in whom they have confi- 
dence — asking questions of those who are supposed to know what our needs 
actually are for national defense. 

The persons of whom the people are inquiring are divided into two 
main classes, namely, the pacifists or advocates of unarmed preparedness, 
and the martialists, who believe in armed preparedness against war. 

The pacifists differ widely among themselves. Some hold the extreme 
opinion that we should wholly abandon all armed preparation, that, in 
fact, we should disarm to set the other nations a great moral example, and 
seek to maintain peace in that way, while others believe that we should 
have some armed preparedness, but not much. The martialists also differ 
among themselves, from the extreme opinion that we should have only a 
little armed preparedness to the opinion that we should have such adequate 
armed protection as would insure the country against war. 

While the pacifists and the martialists differ widely from each other, 
and among one another, regarding the matter of armed preparedness, 
they are, however, all in perfect agreement that we want peace and that 
we should take such measures as shall best insure the country against war. 

Therefore, there is but one question at issue, and it is as to the best 
and most practical insurance that should be sought against v/ar. 

This country being a democracy, the destiny of the nation rests upon 
the opinions of the people. That thing and only that thing will be done, 
or can be done, which the majority of the people believe ought to be done. 
It is, therefore, the plain duty of the people— and happily they are seeing 
more and more that it is their duty — to give the necessary attention and 
study to this subject to inform themselves upon it, and shape their opinions 
according to the evidence. 

Consequently, the essentials of the reasons and argimients of both the 
pacifists and the martialists should be laid before the people for their ex- 
amination and appraisement, and for their guidance according to the evi- 
dence as they may see and understand it. 

It is for this purpose that I am sending this booklet, together with 
my book, " Defenseless America," to a certain number of men and women 
among the leaders of American thought and shapers of public opinion. 

To this end I have asked some distinguished persons throughout the 
country to write me a letter expressing their opinions upon the subject of 
national defense by answering the three following questions: 

3 



4 FOREWORD 

I. Do we need any armed preparedness for our protection in the present 

state of armed preparedness of other nations, in the absence of an 
international tribunal for the judicial settlement of disputes, and in 
the absence of an international armed police force to compel inter- 
national good behavior? 

II. If you think that we need any armed preparedness, what measures of 

preparedness do you think would be adequate? 

III. If you think that we should have adequate armed preparedness, how 

soon should we try to have it, and at what expense? 

In presenting these letters to the reader, I have made no criticisms or 
other comment upon them, in order that the reader may read them with 
an unbiased mind, and arrive at an impartial decision according to the 
evidence as he may see it. Hudson Maxim. 



INDEX OF CONTENTS 

PASS 

Foreword 3 

Letters from Eminent Leaders of American Thought who believe in 

National Defense — Armed Preparedness Against War . . 7 

Letters from Eminent Leaders of American Thought who do not 

believe in National Defense — Armed Preparedness Against War 40 

Opinions Against National Defense — Armed Preparedness Against 
War — expressed in the Writings and Public Speeches of the 
most noted Opponents of National Defense 46 

The War in Europe and Its Lessons for Us, Address by William 

Jennings Bryan, delivered at Johnstowna, Pa., November 1, 1915 47 

The Nation's Preparedness, Statement given to Press of North Caro- 
lina, November 20, 1915, by Hon. Claude Kitehin (House 
leader) 64 

Concerning Preparedness — the famous Henry Ford advertisement . 73 

The Preparedness of America, Address by Dr. Nicholas Murray 

Butler, at Railroad Club, New York, December 18, 1914 . 77 

A Memorial to the Members of the Senate and House of Representa- 
tives of the United States of America from the Religious 
Society of Friends of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and 
Parts of Maryland 79 

Extracts from " The Cause of the War," by Dr. Charles Edward Jef- 
ferson, published by Thomas Y. Crowell Co., December, 1914 . 81 

Shoulder Arms! An Editorial by Hamilton Holt, from The Inde- 
pendent of October, 1915 84 

The Pros and Cons of Preparedness — Outline for Debate, from The 

Literary Digest of February 26, 1916 8Q 

Extracts from Argument of Rev. William Carter, D.D., on The 
Necessity of Preparedness, at the Broadway Tabernacle, New 
York, on February 8, 1916 90 

Answers to Arguments of the Pacifists, by Hudson Maxim . . . 100 

A Letter from Theodore Roosevelt 116 

A Short Speech or Declamation on National Defense .... 120 

To Arms for Peace! A poem. Anonymous 121 



LETTERS 

FROM EMINENT LEADERS OF AMERICAN 

THOUGHT WHO BELIEVE IN NATIONAL 

DEFENSE— ARMED PREPAREDNESS 

AGAINST WAR. 

From HON. OSCAR S. STRAUS, Noted Statesman, Philosopher, Phi- 
lanthropist and Author; Member Permanent Court of Arbitration at 
The Hague. 

5 West 76th Street, New York City, 

March 17, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — I have your letter of the 17th instant asking certain 
questions in regard to Preparedness, which I will answer as I understand 
them. 

I am one of those who believes in the domination of reason and in the 
ideals of justice, not only as between man and man but as between nation 
and nation. America has been foremost among the nations in promoting 
peace conferences and in the negotiation of arbitration treaties. I was in 
the fullest sense a pacifist — and I believe I am one yet — but I confess I 
have changed my mind as to the best means of promoting peace among 
nations. The causes that brought on this world war and the trampling 
down of neutral rights have produced a rude awakening and aroused many 
of us out of dreams and illusions. We would be blind to facts in not 
recognizing that this war has let loose throughout the world the spirit of 
conquest, the hunger for territory and the disregard for neutral rights. 

The nations that have lived longest have invariably been the strongest, 
so long as that strength was used for security and protection, instead of 
for aggression. But some will say that our country is an exception, that 
we have unlimited resources and that we need not fear attack by any 
nation. The answer is : The extent of our opportunities, the vastness of 
our wealth, instead of being a security, unless we employ it in part to 
increase our power of defense, will only be a mark of weakness and an 
invitation for aggr-^ssion. 

But entirely apart from the menace of foreign attack, if America is 
to be an eflfective influence either now or hereafter in the promotion of the 
peace of the world, we mvist be strong and we have no right to shirk our 
duty and cast upon weaker nations the burden of responsibilities of advo- 
cating neutral rights, the sanctity of international obligations and the 
rights of humanity, and that too at a time when international influence 
is measured by the power to enforce respect, not only for its own security 
but also for its potency in the council of nations. 

But it will be said that armaments are provocative of war, that they 
promote the spirit of militarism. That is true where armaments are piled 
up for the sake of domination, but armaments for defense, dominated by 
the civil spirit, is not militarism but a bulwark for the maintenance of 
the reign of law and justice in the world. 

7 



8 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

During three periods of my life, in the past twenty-eight years, I 
represented our country at Constantinople and saw at close range the play 
of diplomacy of the Great Powers and I invariably found that where ques- 
tions of vital importance were at stake the diplomacy of the stronger 
powers won out. 

It is a mistake to believe that armies and navies are of no value when 
not in use. Their greatest potency is often shown in times of peace and 
in promoting peace as the background of effective diplomacy. 

Whether this war will end by the victory of one side or the other or 
by exhaustion, no one at this time can definitely foretell. At any rate our 
country should be prepared for every contingency, and by preparation I 
mean should have at its command adequate power for its security. 

Parents who simply love their children but are not willing to make 
sacrifices for their bringing up and education and to safeguard them in 
health and in sickness may be very affectionate, but they are not good 
parents. So it is with patriotism. It is not enough to love one's country, 
we must do more, we must be willing to make sacrifices for it and take 
forethought and protection to safeguard her interests and to protect her 
under all contingencies from dangers without as well as from dangers 
within. 

Further answering your questions, I am not able to state what amount 
of preparedness we should provide for. I would leave that to the military 
and naval experts, but certainly the amount should be sufficient and ade- 
quate to insure security. We should go forward in securing that prepara;, 
tion at once. The delay has already been too great and had we followed 
the urgings and warnings so forcibly put forward for years past by 
Theodore Roosevelt, we would today be a much more potent force for peace 
than we are now in our comparative weakness. 

Very truly yours, 

(Signed) Oscab S. Steaus. 

From HON. JOSEPH H. CHOATE, Ambassador to Great Britain, 1899- 
1905; Ambassador and first delegate United States to International 
Peace Conference at the Hague, 1907; Vice-President American 
Society for Judicial Settlement International Disputes. 

8 East 63rd Street, New York, 

March 17, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — I can only say in answer to your letter of March 
seventeenth that in my opinion in the present state of armed preparedness 
of other nations we need a vast deal of addition both to our army and 
navy, and to our national reserves, but as to what form these additions 
should take, I must refer you to the expert Reports of the Army Board and 
the Navy Board, and whatever is done ought to be done without any delay 
that is possibly avoidable. 

Very truly yours, 

(Signed) Joseph H. Choate. 

From ELBERT H. GARY, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer United 
States Steel Corporation. 

71 Broadway, New York, 

March 20, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — I have your letter of the 17th instant. 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 9 

1. Yes, I think we should have a navy fully equal to that of any 
other nation. 

2. I think we should have a standing army of at least 250,000 well- 
trained men and a reserve force, subject to Federal control, which could 
be mobilized and equipped on short notice; a large stock of military equip- 
ment should be available at all times; also we should have, removed from 
the seacoast, adequate facilities for keeping the army and navy well supplied 
with their necessities. 

3. We should complete preparedness as soon as practicable and at 
an expense of $1,000,000,000, or more, per year until we are prepared and 
after that a sufficient amount to keep the country in a state of preparedness. 

With kind regards, I am. 

Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) E. H. Gary. 

From CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. 

30 Pine Street, New York, 

March 17th, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — In reply to your letter of even date asking me for an 
expression of opinion on the subject of national defense, I beg to reply to 
your questions as follows: 

1. Yes. 

2. The sentiments expressed in the resolutions unanimously adopted 
at the conference of Mayors and Mayors' Committees in St. Louis on 
March 4th, 1916 (copy of which I enclose), express my views. 

3. At once and at almost any expense. 

Yours very truly, 

(Signed) C. Vandebbilt. 

Enclosure mentioned in Mr. Vanderbilt's letter: 

NATIONAL DEFENSE 

Conference of Mayors and Mayors' Committees 

Resolutions Unanimously Adopted at St. Louis, March 4, 1916. 

Whereas, The purpose of the establishment of the Republic was, 
among other things, to provide for the common defense, and thereby to 
secure to ourselves the blessings of liberty and peace, and 

Whereas, This nation is today without adequate defense by sea or 
land, and is almost wholly without the means to protect its territory, 
defend its people or safeguard its institutions against possible aggression, 
and 

Whereas, For the common national defense there are required: 
An adequate navy. 
Ample coast defenses, 
A mobile army, and 

A mobilization of the organized physical resources of the nation, and 
Whereas, The General Board of the Navy has reported to the Secre- 
tary of the Navy that " our present Navy is not sufficient to give due 
weight to the diplomatic remonstrance of the United States in peace nor 
to enforce its policies in war," and 

Whereas, We believe that the navy should be increased with all speed 
until we shall have become the first naval power of the world, with strength 



10 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

on the Atlantic equal to that of any other power upon that ocean, and 
with additional strength upon the Pacific such as to make of us the first 
naval power upon that ocean, and 

Whereas, The general staff of the army has submitted to the War 
Department a plan for a moderate increase of the regular army and for 
the organization, distribution and equipment thereof, and for the increase 
and complete manning of coast defenses; now, therefore, be it 

Resolved, That we, the mayors and members of Mayors' Committees 
upon National Defense of the Cities of the United States, in convention 
assembled, do hereby demand the immediate authorization by Congress of 
the building program of the General Board of the Navy of July 30, 1915, 
together with such additions and modifications as their expert knowledge 
and experience may indicate to be necessary at this time. And we do 
further demand that the personnel of the na.vj be increased in conformity 
with the requirements of the service as interpreted by the General Board. 

Resolved, That we demand the increase and complete manning of coast 
defenses as recommended by the General Staff. 

Resolved, That we demand the immediate increase, organization and 
disposition of the regular army as recommended by the General Staff. 

Resolved, That recognizing the military obligation equally with the 
civic obligation as a fundamental duty of Democratic citizenship in a 
Republic, and to establish a system which will affect alike every man in 
the Republic, we approve and recommend the adoption of universal military 
training under Federal control throughout the United States. , 

Resolved, That we approve and recommend the immediate formulation 
of plans by the Federal Government for the organization and mobilisation 
of the physical resources of the countrj^, and to that end, among other 
things, we specifically recommend: 

That all arsenals, ordnance, rifle and other munition-producing plants 
supported by Federal appropriation be located at a distance from the 
Atlantic and Pacific seaboards and from the Canadian and Mexican borders 
as recommended in the recent report of the General Staff of the Army. 

That steps be taken by the Federal Government to effect in time of 
peace a standardization of all material which may be required by the 
Government in time of war. 

That the transportation facilities, industries and general resources of 
the country be so marshaled and organized as to make them promptly 
available for service upon the outbreak of war. 

That Federal legislation to effectuate the foregoing be enacted by the 
present Congress. 

And be it further Resolved, That copies of these resolutions be at once 
transmitted to the Senate and to the House of Representatives, and that a 
copy thereof be transmitted at once to each senator and representative of 
the national Congress. 

From Professor GARRETT PUTNAM SERVISS, one of the most noted 
American scientists and litterateurs. 

Closter, New Jersey, 
March 17th, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — I am very glad to answer your questions, to the best 
of my ability, as follows: 

1. We do, most emphatically, need armed preparedness. We should 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 11 

need it in any case, but, as things now are, we need it in the fullest 
measure, and we need to get it in the shortest possible time. 

2. We should have a million thoroughly trained soldiers, exclusively 
under the national colors, and national control, ready to take the field 
instanter, and, in addition, we should have four million more sufficiently 
instructed and trained to need but a few months to make them available 
for the front. We should have professionally educated and trained officers, 
under the national, and not state, government, sufficient to command in the 
field, at the first call, a million men; and there should be a reserve of 
officers equal to say four times the number actually needed at one time in 
the field. It is the officers that the enemy try to kill. We should have, 
on hand, equipment in arms, munitions, provisions, machinery, transporta- 
tion service, etc., sufficient to keep a million men fighting, from the start, 
and we should have, in suitable and safe locations, arms and munition 
factories, under the management and control of the national government. 
We should not fritter away any of our energy and money on state militias 
in any form. They are a sour-^e of weakness, jealousy, distrust, disunion, 
and potential disaster. Let the national government take care of war. 

3. I would say " tomorrow," if that were possible. Let us have an 
energetic beginning at once. There is not an instant to lose. The ultimate 
limit of expenses should be the bottom of Uncle Samuel's pocket; the 
immediate limit should be determined by a summation of the contents of 
all the " pork barrels " trundled by professional Congressmen — a battalion 
for every barrel! 

Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) Gaebett P. Seeviss. 

From COLONEL WILLIAM CONANT CHURCH, Editor United States 
Army and Navy Journal. 

20 Vesey Street, New York, 

March 20, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — The law of the United States adopted in 1792 and 
re-enacted in 1903 and 1908 in what is known as the Dick bill provides 
that every citizen of the United States included in the ages from 18 to 45, 
with the exception of certain statutory exemptions, is subject to a call 
to military service whenever, in the sole discretion of the President of 
the United States, he is needed for the public defense. The adoption of 
the original act of 1792 was the result of the revelation of our military 
inefficiency during the war of the Revolution, and it was sought to estab- 
lish an Army of the People such as was then unknown but has since been 
adopted by Germany and other European states. No pay was provided 
under this law for the American citizens enrolled in what were named 
the " Militia " and they were even required to furnish their own arms and 
ammunition, under the law of 1792, but this law was changed in 1903 to 
provide arms for the Organized Militia. 

The maxim of Washington, Knox and other militant patriots of that 
early day was that the best protection for the Republic was a well-trained 
militia. Congress accepted the principle of universal service but has 
neglected up to this time to provide any training for the young men who 
are subject to a call to arms whenever the country is in danger. 

What is needed for preparedness is, therefore, primarily the carrying 
out of the idea of our Revolutionary forefathers with reference to universal 
military training as the accompaniment of the obligation of universal 



12 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

military service. It follows that the country should also make provision 
for arming our young men to do efficient service as soldiers and should 
further provide for the security of our coasts by the adoption of the most 
complete measures of defense by land or by sea, according to the teachings 
of the latest experience in war. In connection with this we should have 
a systematic co-ordination of the great manufacturing and industrial re- 
sources of the country and its transportation facilities so that these could 
be made promptly eflfective to sustain and assist the men on the firing line. 

" He who hesitates is lost," and having once admitted the necessity 
for preparedness there should be no delay in commencing the work of 
preparation and pushing it to a completion as rapidly as possible. Our 
resources in men, money, mechanical construction and the facilities for 
rapid transportation are ample. It needs only that we co-ordinate them 
so that they can be promptly directed on any danger point. 

Such preparation as is here suggested in no way interferes with the 
consideration of the theories of arbitration and the formation of inter- 
national agreements to compel peace. But " to be weak is to be miserable " 
and it is only by developing the spirit of nationality, through a union for 
public defense, that we can make ourselves respected in the Congress of 
Nations and insure the peaceful control of our aflfairs without fear of 
foreign interference or aggression. 

Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) Wm. Conant Chubch. 

From Commodore J. STUART BLACKTON, President The Vitagraph 
Company of America, Author " The Battle Cry of Peace." 

The Vitagraph Company of America, 

Locust Avenue, Brooklyn, N. Y., 

March 20, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — Replying to your letter of 'March 19th regarding 
an expression of my opinion upon the subject of national defense, answering 
question No. 1, I would say: 

That we not only need armed preparedness for our protection in the 
present state of armed preparedness of other nations, but we would need 
it if there existed an international tribunal for the judicial settlement of 
disputes; for without armed preparedness we would not be sure of our 
place in that international tribunal; and we would need armed prepared- 
ness even if there existed an international armed police force to compel 
international good behavior. The very term " international police force " 
would make it necessary for us to have our share of armed preparedness 
in order to contribute our share of police to that international armed 
police force. 

Answering question No. 2: I think that our first line of defense, 
the Navy, should be brought up to at least second place instead of fifth 
and that this navy should be of such weight, power and equipment as to 
safeguard both our Atlantic and Pacific coasts at one and the same time. 
Protected in this manner by our navy and with a regular army of five 
hundred thousand men properly equipped with modern arms and ammuni- 
tion, America could uphold the Monroe Doctrine and safeguard her interests 
and her citizens not only in the United States, but everywhere on the face 
of the globe. 

Answering question No. 3 : I feel that as a year and a half has 
already been wasted, during which time the defenses of this country could 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 13 

have been greatly improved, every effort should be put forth to remedy 
this criminal negligence and provide for adequate armed preparedness at 
the earliest possible moment and without regard to expense. When this 
is accomplished, then, and then only, will our country, our lives, our 
families and our properties be safe from the Modern Madness of War. 

Very truly yours, 

(Signed) J. Stuabt Blackton. 

From Hon. JAMES F. FIELDER, Governor of the State of New Jersey. 

State of New Jersey, 

Executive Department, 

March 18, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — I reply to the questions propounded in your letter 
of the 17th instant, as follows: 

1. In my judgment we do. 

2. An increase in the regular army and navy; facilities for West 
Point and Annapolis training of a greater number of young men each year ; 
building up the State Militia as a reserve army, through increased Federal 
appropriations, a small amount of pay for the officers and men, stricter 
federal supervision and requiring the militiamen to enlist in the federal, 
as well as state service. 

3. We should commence at once and incur any expense necessary to 
make a good job of it. 

Very truly yours, 

(Signed) James F. Fieldeb. 

From Rev. Dr. CHARLES H. PARKHURST. 

Hotel Ansonia, New York City. 

March IS, 1916. 
My dear Sir: — Unlike many of my clerical brethren I believe in thorough 
" preparedness," for self-protective purposes. It is not an ideal policy, 
but we are not living in an ideal world. Now that international pledges 
have ceased to be binding, we have to accept something as substitute. 
Our country, with its beneficent institutions, we hold in trust, and are 
charged with the responsibility of using our stewardship wisely and there- 
fore of conserving the assets which it devolves upon us to make available 
for the world's benefit. How extensive our preparedness requires to be 
in order to serve this purpose is a question to be answered by those who 
have the requisite information and who are experts in military and naval 
matters. 

Yours with great respect, 

(Signed) C. H. Parkhtjrst. 

From LIEUT. BARON HROLF VON DEWITZ, Danish Military Engineer, 
Author " War's New Weapons." 

Atlantic Beach Hotel, 

Atlantic Beach, Florida, 

March 18, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — In answer to your favor of 17th instant, in which you 
do me the honor of asking me to contribute my opinion to a symposium 
on preparedness, I think I can answer the three questions you put in a 
single statement, to wit: 

Nothing short of a good licking by a first-class power will teach you 



14 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

Americans the lessons of preparedness, for what you need to maintain your 
sovereignty as a nation on a basis of permanency is not a large army 
and navy so much as national discipline and practical patriotism so that 
the individual citizen will gladly sacrifice a part of his time and strength 
for the paramount needs of the nation and the defense of the country. 
No American has a right to consider himself a true American who is not 
willing to serve as a conscript under the colors in times of peace in order 
that his country may be properly prepared in times of war. 

Yours faithfully, 

(Signed) Dewitz. 

From CLEVELAND MOFFETT, Noted Writer, Author of "Saving the 
Nation " and many other important works. 
' 153 East 56th Street, New York City, 

March 18, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — Answering your letter of March 17th, I would say, 
with all possible emphasis, yes, we certainly do need armed preparedness, 
in view of present international conditions. We need a lot of it and we 
need it at the earliest possible moment. 

I believe that, for centuries to come, war must be regarded as an 
inevitable part of human existence, and there is only one way in which 
the United States can be assured against the horrors of armed invasion, 
with the shame of disastrous defeat and possible dismemberment, and> 
that is by developing the strength and valiance to meet all possible assail- 
ants on land or sea. 

Whether we like it or not we are a great world power, fated to become 
far greater, unless we throw away our advantages; we must either accept 
the average world standards, which call for military preparedness, or 
impose new standards upon a world that concedes no rights to nations 
that have not the might to guard and enforce those rights. 

Why should we Americans hesitate to pay the trifling cost of insur- 
ance against war? Trifling? Yes. The annual cost of providing and 
maintaining an adequate army and navy would be far less than we spend 
every year on tobacco and alcohol. Less than fifty cents a month from 
every citizen would be sufficient. That amount, wisely expended, would 
enormously lessen the probability of war and would allow the United 
States, if war came, to face its enemies with absolute serenity. The 
Germans are willing to pay the cost of preparedness. So are the French, 
the Italians, the Japanese, the Swiss, the Balkan peoples, the Turks. Do 
we love our country less than they do? Do we think our institutions, 
our freedom, less worthy than theirs of being guarded for posterity? 

Why should we not adopt a system of military training something 
like the one that has given such excellent results in Switzerland? Why 
not cease to depend upon our absurd little standing army, which, for its 
strength and organization, is frightfully expensive and absolutely inade- 
quate, and depend instead upon a citizenry trained and accustomed to 
arms, with a permanent body of competent officers, at least 50,000, whose 
lives would be spent in giving one year military training to the young 
men of this nation, all of them, say, between the ages of eighteen and 
twenty-three, so that these young men could serve their country efficiently, 
if the need arose? Why not accept the fact that it is neither courageous 
nor democratic for us to depend upon hired soldiers to defend our country? 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 15 

Does any one doubt that a year of such military training would be 
of lasting benefit to the men of America? Would it not school them in 
much-needed habits of discipline and self-control, habits which must be 
learned sooner or later if a man is to succeed? Would not the open air 
life, the physical exercise, the regularity of hours tend to improve their 
health and make them better citizens? 

Suppose that once every five years all American men up to fifty were 
required to go into military camp and freshen up on their defense duties 
for twenty or thirty days. Would that do them any harm? On the con- 
trary, it would do them immense good. 

And even if war never came, is it not evident that America would 
benefit in numberless ways by such a development of the general man- 
hood spirit? Who can say how much of Germany's greatness in business 
and commerce, in the arts and sciences, is due to the fact that all her 
men, through military training, have learned precious lessons in self- 
control and obedience? 

The pacifists tell us that after the present European war we shall have 
nothing to fear for many years from exhausted Europe, but let us not 
be too sure of that. History teaches that long and costly wars do not 
necessarily exhaust a nation or lessen its readiness to undertake new 
wars. On the contrary, the habit of fighting leads easily to more fighting. 
The Napoleonic wars lasted over twenty years. At the close of our civil 
war we had great generals and a formidable army of veteran soldiers and 
would have been willing and able immediately to engage in a fresh war 
against France had she not yielded to our demand and withdrawn Maxi- 
milian from Mexico. Bulgaria recently fought two wars within a year, 
the second leaving her exhausted and prostrate; yet within two years she 
was able to enter upon a third war stronger than ever. 

If Germany wins in the present great conflict she may quite conceivably 
turn to America for the vast money indemnity that she will be unable to 
exact from her depleted enemies in Europe; and if Germany loses or half 
loses she may decide to retrieve her desperate fortunes in this tempting 
and undefended field. With her African empire hopelessly lost to her, 
where more naturally than to facile America will she turn for her coveted 
place in the sun? 

And if not Germany, it may well be some other great nation that will 
attack us. Perhaps Great Britain! Especially if our growing merchant 
marine threatens her commercial supremacy of the sea, which is her life. 
Perhaps Japan! whose attack on Germany in 1914 shows plainly that she 
merely awaits favorable opportunity to dispose of any of her rivals in the 
Orient. Let us bear in mind that, in the opinion of the world's greatest 
authorities, we Americans are today totally unprepared to defend ourselves 
against a first-class foreign power. 

As to our immediate defense requirements, we should have a strong 
and fully manned navy with forty-eight dreadnoughts and battle cruisers 
in proportion. We should have scout destroyers and sea-going submarines 
in numbers sufficient to balance the capital fleet. We should have an 
aerial fleet second to none in the world. We should have a standing army 
of 200,000 men with 45,000 officers, backed by a national force of citizens 
trained in arms under a universal and obligatory one-year military system. 
We should have, finally, adequate munition plants in various parts of the 
country, all under government control and partly subsidized under condi- 
tions assuring ample munitions at any time, but absolutely preventing 



16 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

Erivate monopolies or excessive profits in the munition manufacturing 
usiness. 

This would be — and God grant it prove to be — America's insurance 
against future wars of invasion, against alien arrogance and injustice, 
against a foreign flag over this land. 

Wishing you all success in your patriotic efforts to save this nation 
from disaster, I am, 

Very sincerely, 

(Signed) Cleveland Moffett, 

From J. B. WALKER, Editor-in-Chief, Scientific American, Author 

" America Fallen." 

233 Broadway, New York, 

March 20, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — Answering your favor of March 19th, I beg to 
submit the following answers to the questions therein proposed: 

1. In view of the present state of armed preparedness of other nations, 
and in the absence of an international tribunal for the judicial settlement 
of disputes, 1 am of the opinion that it is among the very first duties of 
the United States adequately to arm itself both on sea and land. 

2. The first and logical line of defense should be found upon the high 
seas, and I believe that in the upbuilding of our navy we should act upon 
the cardinal principle that our whole fleet should be sea-going in every 
unit, of the largest size, and the widest radius of action compatible with 
the class to which it belongs. 

As to the size of this navy, I believe it should always stand second 
in strength among the navies of the world, being exceeded only by that of 
Great Britain. 

Our fleet should be composed of battleships whose armament and 
speed should always be maintained abreast of contemporary practice — 
and preferably ahead of that practice. Since the ultimate issues of a naval 
campaign will be decided in favor of the nation having the heaviest battle- 
ship line, I believe that the bulk of the appropriations by Congress should 
be put into capital ships, battleships and battle-cruisers, the ratio for the 
present being one battle-cruiser to every two battleships. 

I believe that our navy should possess a fleet of thirty-five-knot scouts 
in the ratio of one scout for every capital ship; that we should possess a 
fleet of twelve-hundred-ton, thirty-five-knot destroyers in the ratio of four 
to every capital ship; and that we should possess a fleet of sea-going 
twelve-hundred-ton submarines of not less than twenty-knots' surface speed, 
in the ratio of one to every capital ship. 

With the fleet as above indicated, should go, of course, a complete 
quota of auxiliaries — fuel, ammunition, provision and general supply ships, 
together with the proper ratio of " mother " ships, tenders and other 
auxiliaries. 

In addition to the provision of government gun, armor and ammunition 
factories, I believe that the interests of naval defense would be greatly 
enhanced if the private ship, gun, armor and shell factories were mobilized 
for defense, and if they were provided with sufficient work in peace time 
to enable them in the stress of war to bend their whole energies at once 
to the supply of naval war material. 

As regards the defenses on land, I believe our forces should consist 
of a regular army of 250,000 men, recruited under a six-year enlistment 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 17 

(one or two years with the colors and the balance in reserve) so that in 
time we would possess a trained regular reserve of 500,000 men. The 
National Guard should be taken into Federal control, without pay, and 
should be subjected to army drill, discipline and methods of promotion. 
Back of these forces there should be a volunteer army of 250,000 men 
under control of the officers of the regular army. There should be a 
reserve of officers created of not less than 50,000 men. 

As soon as the country is ready for it, the United States Government 
should impose universal training and service. 

3. The United States should put itself into the state of adequate 
armed preparedness, above outlined, without the loss of a moment of 
time, and with the understanding that, in view of the tremendous emer- 
gency which confronts us, the question of " expense " should be the last 
to be considered. 

The above has been rather hastily dictated, but I think that it will 
give you a fair idea of my views on preparedness. 
Yours very faithfully, 

(Signed) J. Bebnabd Wai^eeb, 

From DR. L. H. BAEKELAND, Noted Inventor and Scientist, Member 
of Naval Consulting Board of the United States. 

Yonkers, N. Y., 
March 20, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — 1. I am in favor of armed preparedness for our pro- 
tection. 

2. I believe in an excellent navy, second only to that of England, 
and in a regular standing army of 200,000 men. I am against any militia 
or National Guard system, unless its officers be professionally trained men. 

3. I am against any system of preparedness which tries to raise 
funds otherwise than by direct taxation, preferably a rapidly increasing 
tax on incomes, so that the burden should be shifted where it belongs, 
and so that every man who pays taxes should realize what " prepared- 
ness " costs him. 

Truly yours, 

(Signed) L. H. Baekeland. 

From CHARLES A. MUNN, President Munn & Co., and Editor The 
Scientific American. 

233 Broadway, New York, 

March 20, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — My opinions in regard to the necessity for national 
defense, both on land and sea, are too well known to need any very special 
comment. As you are aware, the Scientific American has been preaching 
the doctrine of adequate defense for a great number of years, and is one 
of the first publications in this country, if not the first, to take up this 
problem. 

In answer to your queries: 

No. 1. Yes. 

No. 2. I believe that the Chamberlain Bill now before the Senate 
is a fair basis for the degree of preparedness necessary. 

No. 3. I think we have already lost a precious year and a half im 
the way of preparedness, and steps should be taken at once to remedy 



18 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

our present nakedness. As to the expense necessary, I cannot answer such 
a question off hand. 

Faithfully yours, 

(Signed) Charles A. Munn. 

From GENERAL A. R. BUFFINGTON, United States Army, Retired, 
Ex-Chief of Ordnance. 

Madison, New Jersey, 

March 17, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — Yours of this date received this a. m., and here- 
with enclosed I send you my answers to the three questions. 

Yours faithfully, 

(Signed) A. R. Buffington. 
Ansioers to Questions: 

1. Yes, , adequate preparedness, particularly of 'the Navy: that is, 
a Navy equipped with all the appliances of offensive warfare on the high 
seas now used by the belligerents in the present European War, not for 
offensive purposes but for defensive — offensive protection. 

Defensive preparedness would be inadequate for defense unless the 
offensive could be taken at any moment of conflict with would-be invaders 
of the United States. 

2. The measures of preparedness for the Navy — which must 
necessarily be the first line of defense — are stated in above answer to 
question No. 1. Respecting those for an adequate Army, it matters not 
whether it be called " Continental Army " or " Militia " composed of the 
National Guards of the States, provided the appointment of its officers, 
command and organization of it, as a whole, be exclusively under the 
control of the War Department both in times of peace and war: in short, 
the adoption of the most advanced project advocated by Army oflScers who 
know what they advocate to be necessary and not less than 1,000,000 
men all told. 

3. For adequate preparedness of both Army and Na^y, time is the 
factor that must control. It is already too late for the extent of pre- 
paredness we should have, and for what we can have not a moment 
should be lost to begin it. Compromises of any kind won't do. and it 
should be begun now at whatever cost of energy and money in the 
use of both existing government and private plants and facilities. The 
preparedness must now of necessity extend over several years and the 
cost of it would be no more than an insurance for National protection, 
similar to life, property, burglary and marine insurance, and the cost 
for police protection and permanent paid fire departments. 

Cut off the " Pork Barrel " ( local patriotism ) and substitute National 
patriotism for it and reduce " Politics " to a zero quantity in all legis- 
lation. The United States is rich enough to afford it, and if the nation, 
as a whole, must live less expensively to do it, the gain in national vigor 
and patriotism cannot be estimated in dollars and cents. 

(Signed) A. R. Buffington. 

From REV. DR. CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY, Noted Author. 

Yonkers, New York, 

March 17, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — I answer your three questions gladly: 

1. Yes, decidedly so. -- 

2. A force great enough to cope with any possible expedition that 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 19 

could be launched against us, to hold it in check long enough for us to 
mobilize our resources and render available the vast potential energies 
which we should be already organizing to meet such demands. In round 
numbers, I should say a fleet strong enough to defend the sea-board 
against any European or Asiatic country, excepting England, and a regu- 
lar army of at least 250,000 men. Even against any combination of non- 
English speaking people such a force would make it exceedingly difficult 
for an enemy to land an expedition on our shores or to maintain it there. 
And such a force would give us time to rally behind it. I am not an 
expert on those matters and if the suggested numbers are not great enough 
I would cheerfully advocate their increase. 

3. We should commence our preparation at once without regard to 
the expense, taking care to use our income to the best advantage and with 
provident care and without reckless waste, and the money should be raised 
by taxes or duties, not by loans or bonds. We must not mortgage the 
future to defend the present. 

Yours very sincerely, 

(Signed) Cyrus Townsend Bradt. 

From S. STANWOOD MENKEN, President National Security League. 

52 William Street, New York. 
March 20, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — I take pleasure in saying that my answer to the 
first question in your letter of March 17th is decidedly "Yes." 

As to the second, my answer is "The full measure of Preparedness 
advocated by the general staff of the Army and the Navy Board." 

As to the third, I think expense in the matter of safety to America 
is a negligible question and should not be considered. 

The whole issue may be summed up in the proposition that partial 
Preparedness is no Preparedness, and that the greatness of the United 
States is such that in the matter of national safety, cost is a mere inci- 
dent. 

Yours very truly, 

(Signed) S. Stanwood Menken. 

From DR. MILLER REESE HUTCHISON, Inventor, Chief Engineer 
Edison Laboratories, Member Naval Consulting Board of the United 
States, Personal Representative of Thomas A. Edison. 

Orange, New Jersey, 

March 17, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — No. 1. Yes. 

No. 2. Such as will enable us to prevent invasion by any existing 
nation. 

No. 3. Immediately — and at such expense as may be necessary and 
adequate. 

Yours sincerely, 

(Signed) Miller Reese Hutchison. 

From DOROTHY DIX, Well-known Author and Journalist. 

New York City, 
March 20, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — In reply to your first question, I should say "yes," 
unequivocally. 



20 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

To my mind, the idea of a great rich nation being unprepared to 
defend itself is as silly as the idea of a big rich jewelry store being left 
with all its treasures spread out on the shelf, and the doors wide open. 
All of success in life, all of safety, depends upon the measure of our pre- 
paredness to meet the dangers and difficulties we must encounter. We 
fail or succeed in business, or in our professions, according to the meas- 
ure of our preparedness for our enterprise. We live or die according to 
how we are prepared to meet strain or disease. And what is true of the 
individual is a thousandfold true of the nation. 

I think that we need armed preparedness. We need the best that 
intelligence and money can give us. And we need it now. 

It seems to me that the history of German efficiency in this war, and 
our unpreparedness for the present difficulty in Mexico should settle the 
question of national preparedness beyond the possibility of argument. 

Yours sincerely, 

(Signed) Dorothy Dix. 

From CHARLES BASKERVILLE, Ph. D., F. C. S.. Professor of Chemistry, 
College of the City of New York. 

New York, 
March 20, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — Par. 1. Yes. 

Par. 2. Should have to depend upon advice of experts in that field 
to arrive at any conclusion as to what would constitute " adequate." 

Par. 3. Should begin at once and spend whatever may be necessary. 
Par. 4. I am adding this: That of equal importance is industrial 
preparation for times of peace. 

Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) Chaeles Baskebville. 

From GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK, Editor, The Fatherland. 

1123 Broadway, New York. 

March 18, 1916. 
Dear Dr. Maxim: — 1. Preparedness, like efficiency, should not be de- 
batable. I cannot conceive how anyone can be opposed to either. 

2. I believe that we need a Jia.vj great enough to protect our shores 
against Great Britain on the Atlantic, and against Japan on the Pacific. 
There is no need of a large army, because it is unlikely that the soldiers 
of Germany will ever march across the ocean. The same is true of the 
soldiers of Russia and Great Britain. I think we have little to fear from 
an invasion, but everything from a blockade and from the bombardment of 
our coasts. I nevertheless believe that our army should be considerably 
stronger than it is. The inadequacy of our present military status is 
shown by the Mexican incident. For it certainly is a humiliating specta- 
cle to see the United States compelled to parley with Mexican bandits, and 
to give the sanction of our Government to the invasion of our country for 
any purpose whatsoever by the cut-throats of any of the Mexican factions. 

3. I have already indicated my answer to the third' question in my 
reply to the second. We must have a navy that cannot be challenged with 
impunity by Great Britain and Japan combined. We must have an army 
at least five times its present strength. But this is not sufficient. We 
must have preparedness and efficiency in our industries and in our rail- 
road systems as well as in military matters. In this we should follow 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 21 

the great example of Germany. Instead of being Morganized, let us be 
Organized. 

Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) George Sylvesteb Vieeeck. 

From BRIG. GEN. JAMES N. ALLISON, U. S. A., Secretary and Editor, 
The Military Service Institution of the United States. 

Governor's Island, N. Y., 

March 21, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — Condensing as much as possible my reply to the 
three questions found in your letter of March 18th, the following is sub- 
mitted for your consideration : 

In reply to your first question, it appears to me that events of the past 
two weeks along the Mexican border should answer this question to convince 
the most pacific of pacifists, if indeed anything short of disaster can con- 
vince, of which I am in some doubt. Surely it would appear that a great 
nation found powerless to follow and punish a marauding band of 500 until 
a reluctant Congress shall have passed an emergency measure increasing 
the national army, is in sore need of something by way of armed prepared- 
ness. In a broader view, the months since July of 1914 have showTi beyond 
question that right unsupported by might is like a law presenting no 
penalty, and sentimentally regarded just so long as no temptation offers 
towards its violation. Selfish and unscrupulous men observe and obey the 
law only because the penitentiary looms behind it. And nations are exactly 
as good as the men composing them. 

In reply to your second question: We need a navy equal in power and 
effectiveness to the best, an army ready at any moment to throw into the 
field five complete divisions of all arms, fully equipped and with reserve 
supplies (munitions and field equipment) for a six months' campaign; an 
organized national guard (not state militia) of twenty divisions of all arms 
ready to take the field in ten days, armed, equipped, and supplied as indi- 
Cc^ted for the regular army. Cannon, shells, and small arms can not be 
manufactured over night. 

A reserve consisting of the male citizens of the United States between 
eighteen and forty-five, trained to a degree of efficiency equal to proper 
care of self and arms in the field in all seasons, ability to send a rifle bullet 
through a six-hundred-yard target with reasonable certainty, and a working 
knowledge of the school of the soldier. These qualifications to be indis- 
pensable to the right of suffrage, which should be awarded as a high privi- 
lege and honor, and not sown broadcast and indiscriminately as to-day. 

In reply to your third question: At the earliest possible moment, and 
without regard to cost. Better two, three, or five billions, if necessary, 
for defense, than double the amount for tribute. 
Very sincerely yours, 

(Signed) James N. Allison. 

From Dr. DAVID JAYNE HILL, Member Permanent Administrative 
Council of Hague Tribunal; President Advisory Board, American 
Defense Society, New York. 

1745 Rhode Island Avenue, Washington, D. C, 

March 20, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — I present the following answers to the three questions 
asked in your letter of March 19 : 



22 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

1. Unless we are prepared to protect our coasts and frontiers and our 
citizens, wherever they may be, we fail in the performance of a constitu- 
tional guarantee to our people. 

2. We require at least an immediately available army of 200,000 
trained men, and a trained reserve of seven or eight hundred thousand 
available upon short notice. The navy should be increased and kept con- 
stantly with a full complement of men and ready for action. 

3. We need this degree of preparation immediately. 

Very truly yours, 

(Signed) . David J. Hill. 

From REV. DR. MADISON C. PETERS, Chairman Educational Committee, 
American Peace and Arbitration League. 
' 225 Fifth Avenue, New York, 

March 18, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — In reply to your questions of March 17th, first, we do 
need armed preparedness. I did not think so two years ago. I am sorry 
that I have been obliged to change my opinion. 

Second, the measure of preparedness I would advocate — reasonable ade- 
quacy; but in view of present conditions wholly unforeseen a few years 
ago, I would put all the emphasis on adequacy, and I would leave the 
adequacy to be decided by men who know sometliing about the subject, and 
keep it out of the hands of the grafters who have spent millions on the 
army and the navy for which we have nothing to show. 

In answer to your third question, I would say that we should have 
preparedness just as fast as we can get it, and get it good regardless of 
expense, only put preparedness in the hands of business men and not inex- 
perienced ward heelers. 

Your3 very sincerely, 

(Signed)' Madison C. Peters. 

From C. S. THOMPSON, Chairman Executive Committee, The American 
Defense Society, New York. 

303 Fifth Avenue, New York., 

March 17, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — I am sending herewith the answers to the questions 
included in your letter of March 17th. 

Ans. 1. The present state of armed preparedness of other nations, the 
absence of an international tribunal for the judicial settlement of disputes, 
and the absence of an international police force to compel international 
good behavior are to my mind but three reasons for the armed preparation 
of the United States of America. It is quite apparent that our civilization 
is still built upon force. I firmly believe the only thing for this nation to 
do if this nation believes in permanent peace is to arm itself to the teeth, 
and, with the help of allied nations, if need be, fight for permanent inter- 
national peace, and then maintain an international police force to keep the 
international peace established. 

Ans. 2. Half measures are useless. No measure of preparedness is 
adequate unless it provides for universal service and for enough materiel 
in the way of ships, guns, and ammunition, to exceed the supplies of any 
other one nation. 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 23 

Axis. 3. If the future of our republic depends upon our armed pre- 
paredness, I think steps should be taken at once, and by that I mean to-day. 
I should take the matter out of the hands of Congress and place it in the 
hands of the real doctors, the military experts. We should carry out their 
recommendations, and the question of expense should not be considered in 
the way of limiting our preparations. 

To all those who are still in doubt upon the question, I recommend a 
reading of " Defenseless Avierica." 

With best wishes, 

Very truly yours, 

(Signed) C. S. Thompson. 

From Rev. Dr. S. PARKES CADMAN, Pastor Central Congregational 
Church, Brooklyn, New York. 

64 Jefferson Avenue, Brooklvn, N. Y., 

March 21, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — In answer to your first question, I do believe in 
armed preparedness. In answer to the second and third questions, I would 
leave the necessary measures to those who are experts on such subjects, 
as I am not. 

Cordially yours, 

(Signed) S. Paekes Cadman. 

From Hon. FRANK B WILLIS, Governor of Ohio. 

Executive Department, Columbus, Ohio, 
March 20, 1916. 
Dear Sir: — Your inquiry received. I think we do need armed preparedness 
for our protection in the present state of armed preparedness of other 
nations, in the absence of an international tribunal for the judicial settle- 
ment of disputes. I think that our na\'y should be strengthened very 
materially and that the National Guard organizations of the country should 
be doubled and increased in efficiency and equipment and that tlie standing 
army should be strengthened. I am not in favor of a " continental army." 

Yours very truly, 

(Signed) Frank B. Willis. 

From Hon. A. P. GARDNER, United States Congressman, Sixth District 

of Massachusetts. 

Committee on Ways and Means, 
House of Representatives, Washington, D. C, 

March 20, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — I beg to reply to your letter of March 17, 191G, as 
follows : 

I think that we ought to have sufficient naval and military strength, 
to make this country safe against attack from any nation on earth, in- 
cluding Great Britain. I think that we ought to have sufficient naval and 
military strength to maintain the Monroe Doctrine and the policy of 
excluding Chinese and Japanese immigrants. 

Just what naval and military strength is necessary to accomplish 
those purposes ought to be left to the decision of an expert national baard 



24 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

of some sort. Meanwhile until such a board is created, I think that we 
ought to adopt the views of the Army War College and the General Board 
of the Navy. 

We ought to hasten our armament to the utmost of the country's 
capacity. As to the expense, no matter how large, we must grin and bear 
it. The cost should not be counted. 

I think that it would be fantastic to attempt to arm against a com- 
bination of nations. We have enough to do to legislate about probabilities 
and reasonable possibilities without going into the realms of conceivabilities. 

Very truly yours, 

(Signed) A. P. Gabdneb. 

From Professor ARTHUR T. HADLEY, President Yale University. 

New Haven, Connecticut, 
' March 21, 1916. 

My dear Mr. Maxim: — I believe that America, like every other democracy, 
needs to exact an obligation of military service or its equivalent from all 
voters, if the government is to be safe. But with regard to the armed 
preparedness needed under existing conditions, or adequate for existing 
conditions, I had rather not attempt to give answers even for so interest- 
ing a symposium as yours promises to be. 

Very sincerely, 

(Signed) Abthub T. Hadlet. 

From Dr. J. E. HAUSMANN, Secretary, The American Legion. 

10 Bridge Street, New York, 

March 21, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — In reply to your letter, dated March 17th, I wish 
to answer as follows: 

1. To this I answer emphatically Yes. 

2. To know the degree of preparedness which would be adequate, we 
must know the degree of armament of other first class powers. Navy — we 
must equal any first class power. Army — we should have a standing army 
of at least 250,000 mobile troops with an army service corps capable of 
making these troops effective, and a really trained Citizen Soldiery through 
universal military service to back that Army when necessary. 

3. We should have adequate armed preparedness as soon as possible, 
in fact we should have it now. Had we started at the beginning of this 
terrible European catastrophe we would at least at this date have a decent 
nucleus. You ask what expense — no expense. As every good business man 
insures his property and does not consider that insurance an expense, but 
rather an asset, so should the United States insure its vast resources and 
the lives of its citizens. 

Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) J. E. Hausmann. 

From Rev. Dr. JOHN WESLEY HILL, General Secretary The World's 

Court League. 

Equitable Building. New York, 

March 22, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — In reply to yours of the 17th I beg to state: 

First: In my judgment we need the most adequate national defense 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 95 

in the absence of the International Tribunal for judicial settlement to 
which you refer. 

The World's Court League, of which I am General Secretary, is 
directing a propaganda for the establishment of an International Tribunal, 
but until that Tribunal is established we believe national defense the duty 
of the hour and stand for the most thorough and complete preparation 
against invasion on our national rights or life. 

Second: As to the measure of preparedness, I am not a specialist. 1 
believe, however, that our army should be greatly enlarged and that our 
navy should be the strongest in the world. 

We owe such preparedness, not only to ourselves, but to the whole 
world, especially the smaller nations of this Western Hemisphere which 
look to us for protection in the assertion and maintenance of their rights. 

Third: Believing in adequate army preparedness, I believe we should 
move for it without delay, for, " one of these days is none of these days." 

Nestor said in counseling the great generals in their attack upon Troy, 
" the secret of victory is in getting a good ready " and the sooner we get 
a good ready the sooner we will be prepared for our world-wide mission of 
peace, justice and brotherhood. 

As to the cost of all this, I know not, nor would I consider it. The 
thing paramount is preparedness. The cost should be a secondary con- 
sideration. 

Finally: I am glad to know of your activities in this cause. True, 
you are advocating preparedness with all your might, but upon the other 
hand you are striving for something beyond preparedness, namely The 
World Court for the Adjudication of World Disputes. In this work I bid 
you Godspeed. 

Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) John Wesley Hili,, 

From Hon. FRANK M, BYRNE, Governor of South Dakota. 

Executive Chambers, 

Pierre, South Dakota, 
March 20, 1916. 
My dear Sir: — In answer to your letter of the 17th of this month, I have 
the honor to state as follows: 

We should be prepared against aggression, against the possibility of 
war, for defense against any possible attack, and to uphold our rights. 
Such preparation should be strong enough to be effective, and it should be 
made effective at the earliest possible moment. 

Yours sincerely 

(Signed) Frank M. Btene. 

From DANIEL FROHMAN. 

Lyceum Theatre, New York, 

March 22, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — I am one of those who feels firmly convinced that 
the United States needs at once to adopt a sound, sane, practical method 
for preparedness with a view to avoiding war. I believe in the mailed 
hand, which is capable of extending and maintaining friendship, and which 
can at the same time be raised to defend its honor; and I think that the 



26 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

preparations for such a condition should be adopted by instant efforts in 
the way that our statesmen are best enabled to bring about that condition. 
I beg to remain. 

Very truly yours, 

(Signed) Daniel Fbohman. 

From MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD, U. S. Arnv , Commanding 
Department of the East. 

Governors Island, N. Y., • 
March 17, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — I enclose herewith a copy of my hearing before 
the Senate Military Committee which expresses my opinion in detail and 
with entire frankness on the subject of the amount of preparation needed. 
I Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) Leonard Wood. 

Extracts from Statement of Major-General Leonard Wood at the Hearing 
before the Committee on Military Affairs, House of Representatives, 
January 24, 26 and 27, 1916: 

The Chairman. General Wood, the committee is ready to hear you on the 
general subject of preparedness. 

Gen. Wood. Do you wish me to make a general statement? 

The Chairman. I think that would be desirable. 

Gen. Wood. I believe that we need a very material increase in the 
strength of the Mobile Army, the Coast Artillery, and the Engineers, with 
an accompanying increase in the auxiliary arms, an increase proportionate 
to whatever increase may be given in the line. 

The principal shortages today are limited not only to the personnel, 
but they are equally alarming in the materiel. My own recommendations 
called for a regular establishment of approximately 220,000 men, with 
proper reserves of materiel for this force, and also a reserve of enlisted 
men equal in strength to the regular force. They also called for a reserve 
corps of officers of not less than 45,000, for which we have available 
materiel which is not being used. 

I also recommended that general military training be made a national 
policy. I do not believe that any other system can be considered as other 
than a makeshift and a stopgap, a source not of safety, but of delusion. 
When the critical moment comes it will break down, as it has broken 
down in every war in which we have been engaged. Any attempt to depend 
upon a volunteer system, pure and simple, admirable as is the volunteer 
spirit, will fail. It means the organization for war after war is upon us 
and the transferring of the burden of war to the time of war, than which 

no more unwise policy can be conceived. 

******* 

Mr. McKenzie. General, knowing you to be a practical military man, 
I want to ask you how large an expeditionary force, in your judgment, 
could be landed on our shores within six months after hostilities opened. 

Gen. Wood. A million or a million and one-half men; there is prac- 
tically no limit to the number. 

Mr. McKenzie. What nation could land that many men on our shores 
in six months? 

Gen. Wood. Germany or England, after this war is over. 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 27 

Mr. McKenzie. In six months? 

Gen. Wood. Oh, yes ; any first-class military power, well prepared, can 
land 250,000 men on our shores in fifteen days, and do it easily, once 
they secured control of the sea. 

Mr. McKenzie. Will you please elaborate on that, so that the people 

of the country, reading your testimony, will understand how that can be 

done? 

Gen. Wood. Our Navy is easily .fourth today in power. 
******* 

Mr. McKenzie. Right on that point, General, do you think it is 
the proper thing to assume that our Navy could be driven from the sea, 
such as it is, within 30 days or 60 days, and that an expeditionary force 
could be landed on our shores? 

Gen. Wood. I do not think our Navy would be driven from the sea 
until they had done all possible. I think many would be found at the 
bottom of the sea, and the rest bottled up. 

Mr. McKenzie. You mean at the end of 60 days? 

Gen. Wood. Within that time. When a condition demanding war 

comes about, the enemy nation which is going to strike knows when and 

where it is going to strike. We are not going to get a polite warning 

saying that we are going to attack you at such a time and such a place. 

It will come as quickly as the action of Japan against Port Arthur. It 

is just such an attack as that which is going to catch us. 
******* 

Mr. Greene. Would not the probable intention of an invader be to go 
straight to the locality you have indicated and then, say, for instance, 
occupy that territory and levy tribute on the rich cities in that locality? 
Would he not be more likely to do that than to try to go into the interior? 

Gen. Wood. He would probably hold New York and Boston; possibly 
the entire arms and munitions area from Boston to Baltimore, and exact 
such tribute as he wanted; then take whatever action might be necessary 
to prevent us from longer asserting the Monroe doctrine. He would take 
anything he wanted. It would be just a question of how much he wanted. 
If we should be driven out of that comparatively small area, we would 
go back practically to the condition of prehistoric man so far as arms are 
concerned. 

A great many of the supplies that we need in case of war come from 
other countries. Take nitrates, for instance. All our nitrates come from 
Chili. There is not a plant of importance for the manufacture of synthetic 
nitrogen in this country. We need synthetic nitrogen. We have to have 
it in huge quantities. All our nitrates come from oversea. 

From REAR-ADMIRAL JOSEPH STRAUSS, Chief of the Bureau of 
Ordnance, United States Navy. 

Washington, D. C, 
March 22, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — In reply to your letter of the 17th instant I beg 
to state that I do believe in armed preparedness for our protection, and 
I think the measure of such preparedness is best set forth in the recom- 
mendation of the General Board, approved by the Secretary of the Navy. 
Very sincerely yours, 

(Signed) J. StbausS. 



28 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

From HENRY A. WISE WOOD, Inventor, Author, Public Speaker, Chair- 
man of the Conference Committee on Preparedness. 

25 Madison Ave., New York, 

March 23, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — I am in receipt of yours of the 18th and hasten to 
comply with the request contained therein. My belief may be expressed as 
follows : 

1. Until the foremost Powers shall have agreed upon a body of inter- 
national law, and shall have created an international court having full 
jurisdiction over every cause which may arise between nations, and until 
these Powers shall have merged their naval and military establishments in 
a common force answerable only to such an international court, the United 
States, having to rely for its defense upon its own military prowess, must 
be maintained at all times in readiness to defend itself against attack. 

2. In view of the obligations imposed upon us in Central and South 
America and in Mexico by the Monroe Doctrine, and in Central America by 
our possession of the Panama Canal, and the burdens laid upon us by 
our Asiatic exclusion policy and the necessity we are under of preserving 
the open door in China, we must maintain such a force, upon the Atlantic 
as shall make us thereon the second naval power, and upon the Pacific 
as shall make us thereon the first naval power. 

With respect to our land forces we should immediately adopt uni- 
versal military training and service, and until the numbers in training 
and service are sufficient for our protection we should continue to maintain 
as at present an employed army for the purpose. The National Guard 
should be merged in the civilian army, first having been divested of its 
allegiance to and control by the individual States, and in its stead state 
constabularies should be established. 

3. As we have entered a most critical period of international read- 
justment, in which our likely part is wholly obscure, it behooves us to 
trim our sails and prepare to care for ourselves in foul weather should 
it come. This necessitates quick action upon a wide scale, if we are to 
neutralize in sufficient measure the vast naval and military superiority 
now possessed by the other Powers. 

To achieve this in naval affairs we must first accept the principle 
that in the last analysis a nation's naval power is based upon its ship- 
building capacity and it wealth. We have sufficient wealth, but not suffi- 
cient shipbuilding capacity, while our existing naval force is wholly inade- 
quate, not alone to afford us the naval rank among nations above indi- 
cated to be necessary but to protect either coast successfully were we 
attacked by any one of four other naval Powers. This deficiency should 
be met promptly by the immediate authorization of every unit necessary 
to give us proper rank, at a single shipbuilding operation; by providing 
the shipbuilding and related industries with the incentive to expansion 
which such a program would give; by sufficiently enlarging our naval 
institutions of instruction, and by authorizing the necessary increase in 
personnel. 

As a large part of this investment would represent plant, the invest- 
ment should largely be provided for by the sale of bonds, retirable annu- 
ally throughout an appropriate period of years. And the expenditure 
involved in such retirements should be written off as a manufacturer writes 
off depreciation of plant. Cordially, 

(Signed) Heney A. Wise Wood. 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 29 

From COLONEL 0. B. MITCHAM, General Ordnance Officer, Eastern 
Department, Commanding Officer, New York Arsenal. 

Governors Island, New York Harbor, New York City, 

March 24th, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — Replying to the inquiry contained in your letter of 
March 19th, 1916, I take pleasure in giving you my opinion as requested. 
The questions asked by you will not be repeated here, but will be taken 
up in the order in which they are mentioned in your letter. 

1. There can be no question as to the need of armed preparedness 
in our country for our protection. The present conditions in Switzerland 
and Holland, with war on the borders of both states, show the advantages 
of foresightedness in the matter of military preparation. Although these 
states are small in size, they have relatively large armies; the neutrality 
of neither has been invaded during the present armed struggle in Europe. 

2. Our navy should be second in strength only to that of Great 
Britain, With regard to our army, we should have such a force of 
regulars and of reserves that at least one million men could be put into 
the field in a relatively short time if circumstances should require armed 
resistance. Recent facts have shown that wars in the future will not be 
participated in by a number of men only, but by nations; therefore, some 
form of universal military service should be enforced in our country. 

3. Your inquiry has reference as to how soon we should try to have 
armed preparedness in the United States. My answer is that this should 
be begun at once and be carried out independently of all questions of 
expense. The latter is a minor matter when the protection of one's native 
land is at stake. 

I have tried to give you above, in succinct form, my views of the 
question which is now so greatly agitating all persons in our country. 

Very sincerely, 

(Signed) O. B. Mitcham, 



From CAPTAIN RICHMOND P. HOBSON, received through courtesy of 

Mrs. Hobson. 

Tuxedo Park, New York, 

March 18, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — I am sorry to say that Captain Hobson is at present 
off on a trip in the interests of National Prohibition and will not get 
home for some weeks. I am therefore forwarding your recent letter to 
him in Texas and hope he will have an early opportunity of answering it. 
You must know how deep is his interest in the subject of National 
Defense. I am taking the liberty of sending under separate cover one of 
his speeches in Congress, the last one on the subject he made last year, 
and in case you do not hear from him in the next week, I would suggest 
that you quote from any part of this speech that you see fit to use as 
you suggest. 

Let me tell you that we have your wonderful book, " Defenseless 
America," and we think there is nothing like it! 
Yours in the interests of a great Navy, 

(Signed) Grizelda Hull Hobsox. 
(Mrs. Richmond P. Hobson.) 



30 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

Extract from Speecli of Hon. Richmond P. Hobson before the House of 

Representatives, February 5, 1915: 
" Now, Mr. Chairman, I lay it down, and it cannot be disputed success- 
fully, that as a living policy, a status of defense for this Nation, as a 
permanent policy, we cannot safely permit any great military nation of 
Europe that has a great standing army and has a vast merchant marine 
supplying transportation, and therefore always- ready to have what is 
known as the control of the sea between its shores and ours. We could 
not strike them back if we had control of the sea, because we would have 
no Armj^, and the fleet alone cannot go ashore, but if they have control 
of the sea they can strike us almost instantly without any chances of 
resistance on our part. The same principle applies to the Pacific Ocean. 
We cannot safely permit a nation in Asia that is a great military nation, 
with a vast standing army available and a merchant marine ready for 
transportation, to be in control of the sea in that ocean. Now, then, 
these oceans are so far apart that we cannot permit this condition to 
exist in either ocean. Therefore a single-fleet Navy will not answer. 
We must maintain as a living proposition a fleet in the Pacific Ocean 
superior to the na^'y of Japan and a fleet in the Atlantic Ocean superior 
to the navy of Germany, both at the same time." 

From HON. EMANUEL L. PHILIPP, Governor of Wisconsin. 

Executive Chamber, Madison, Wis., 

March 23, 1916. 
Dear Sir: — I am in receipt of your letter of March 17 containing questions 
in regard to my view of national preparedness. As to whether we need 
" any armed preparedness for our protection in the presence of armed 
preparedness of other nations,".! take it for granted that a nation should 
be able to protect itself from any probable invasion of its territory or 
its rights. But as to laying down the exact measures of preparedness, the 
cost, and the time in which it should or could be done, that is a question 
upon which we shall have to take the best advice of our military authori- 
ties. It is not for the civilian to answer in an ofl"hand way. 

Ours, of course, must be mainly a citizen defense so far as land 
operations are concerned; and a navy that is not formidable is of little 
use. In deciding details legislators should carefully weigh the suggestions 
of military experts because it is purely a military question. 

Very truly yours, 

(Signed) E. L. Philipp. 

From HON. ROLLAND H. SPAULDING, Governor of New Hampshire. 
State of New Hampshire, Executive Department, Concord, N. H., 

March 24, 1916. 
Dear Sir: — Replying to your letter of inquiry of March 17, I do believe 
that we need armed preparedness for our part in the international aff'airs 
of the future. What degree of preparedness we need, what measures 
should be taken for it and how much it should cost are questions which 
I am not qualified to pass judgment upon. The work should begin at 
once, I think, and its first steps should be to build up our navy and 
our coast defenses. Then we should proceed to put firm flesh and 
strong muscle upon our army skeleton. 

Yours very truly, 

(Signed) Rolland H. Spauxding. 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 31 

From HON. GEORGE A. CARLSON, Governor of Colorado. 

The State of Colorado, Executive Chamber, Denver, 

March twenty-four, Nineteen Sixteen. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — Replying to your letter of inquiry of March 
17th: 

1. Yes. 

2. I believe the measures of preparedness should be left to the 
military experts of the country. 

3. As soon as possible and at any expense necessary. 

Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) Geoege A. Caelson. 

From HON. JOHN B. KENDRICK, Governor of Wyoming. 
The State of Wyoming, Executive Department, Cheyenne, 

21 March 1916. 
My dear Sir: — I have your letter of the 17th instant and take pleasure 
in replying to your inquiries as follows: 

First. As to the need of this country for armed preparedness I 
am fully convinced that we should at once carry out the program sug- 
gested and supported by President Wilson. 

Second. I believe that this program should embrace increase in 
both the army and the navy, should include government establishments 
for the manufacture of munitions, and should provide for an adequate 
aeroplane equipment. 

Third. I am confident that this program of preparedness cannot 
be initiated any too soon. In the present chaotic condition of world 
affairs the possibilities of our being involved some way or other are 
great, and the probabilities of an avoidance of conflict would be still 
greater if we were prepared. As to the expense, I hardly feel competent 
to make an estimate of that at this time. 

Yours very truly, 

(Signed) John B. Kendeick. 

From HON. WOODBRIDGE N. FERRIS, Governor of Michigan. 
State of Michigan, Executive Office, Lansing, 

March twentj^-third, 1916. 
My dear Sir: — I have your letter of ]\Iarch seventeenth in which you 
ask three questions. 

My answer to the first question is that the United States in the 
absence of an " international tribunal for the settlement of disputes," 
and in the absence of " an armed police force to compel international 
good behavior," does need adequate protection. 

Your second question I cannot answer. Military experts who are 
not deeply interested in the manufacture of munitions of war ought 
to be able to answer this question. When I want advice on a subject 
of which I know little, I ask an expert. Then I ask another expert, 
and so on down the line, because I find that experts are like the ma- 
jority of human beings, subject to prejudice, and the other weaknesses 
that human nature possesses. After all, they constitute the best source 
for advice and plans. I am not in favor, however, of accepting the 
standard set by other nations. Our preparedness should be with refer- 
ence to our peculiar situation and our peculiar needs. 



32 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

In answer to your third question, I would say that we should 
make our armed preparedness immediately, observing the caution that 
I have hinted at in my previous paragraph. It would be unfortunate 
if the United States were to go to the extreme of preparedness and 
burden the nation with a debt that it would take centuries to pay. 
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the nations of the world will recover from 
the present acute attack of insanity. With best wishes, I am 

Cordially yours, 

(Signed) Woodbeidge N. Feeris. 

From HON, WILLIAM C. McDONALD, Governor of New Mexico, 

State of New Mexico, Santa F6, ^ 

^ March 22, 1916. j 

Dear Sir: — I have your letter of March 17th, and in reply will say that 
in a general way I am in favor of the right sort of preparedness by the 
United States for defending our rights as a nation against any undue 
interference or attempt at aggression. 

1st. While preparedness will not prevent war altogether it msana 
protection and under some circumstances might be the cause of preventing 
war if we were not in a position to protect ourselves. 

2nd. I was really in favor of the plan presented by Secretary Gar- 
rison rather than the bill which is now before congress, as I believe that 
control by the federal government would be more effective and that our 
forces could be used to better advantage at any time they might be 
needed if they were completely and absolutely under the control of the 
federal government. I do not believe that a large standing army is really 
necessary but do believe in a large body of reserves that might be 
available in case of an emergency. 

3rd. Since I have reached the conclusion that preparedness is 
necessary, I believe it is necessary now and that immediate steps should 
be taken for the purpose of putting this countrj' in such a position that 
it would be able in case of necessity to defend itself against any nation 
of the world. 

Yours very truly, 

(Signed) W. C. McDonald. 

From REAR-ADMIRAL W, W. KIMBALL, U, S. N., Retired. 

1757 Q Street, Washington, D. C, 

March 28, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — Referring to your letter of March 18, 1916, forwarded 
to me from Maine, I will answer your questions in regard to national 
preparedness against war, as best I may. 

1. Most assuredly we need armed preparedness if we propose to 
maintain either our national rights or our national existence, the latter 
directly and intimately depending upon the former. 

Until nations and men become very, very different from what they now 
are and from what they have been from the dawn of history, the temptation 
to use force against a rich and helpless country like ours cannot and will 
not be resisted by strong and efficient nations that have everything to gain 
and nothing to lose in bringing armed force to bear against us. 

Perhaps more especially do we need armed preparedness to resist a 
possible attempt at enforcing the findings of an international tribunal fo" 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 33 

the judicial settlement of disputes by an armed international police force, 
should such a tribunal ever exist. 

While the probability of the coming of such stupendous evils as a 
practical international tribunal and a practically powerful international 
armed police is slight, we should remember that the Holy Alliance was 
prevented from bringing these very evils upon the world by the facts that 
the program of the Alliance interfered with British trade and that, there- 
fore, the British fleet interfered with the program of the Alliance. 

Our own ridiculous failure in attempting, in the Washington Con- 
ference, a little international tribunal for central American countries, is 
a small but cheerful indication that the danger of a real and practicable 
world-wide international tribunal is not great. 

Should such a tribunal exist there would no longer be any trouble and 
fuss about preparedness against war by the United States of America, 
because there would then no longer be any United States of America. 

2. We, the people, all know what should be the answer to this 
question. We all know that there is but one way to adequate preparedness 
against war and that that way lies through universal conscription. 

But since we have neither the pluck nor the patriotism nor the economic 
common-sense to face the facts, we like to indulge ourselves in silly 
twaddle about " citizenry trained to arms," which means universal con- 
scription if it means anything, and to try to pretend to ourselves that we 
might depend upon our National Guard — which, whatever else it may be, is 
not National and cannot guard the nation against any danger. 

We, the people, all know that the personnel of the least possible force 
that could be considered an adequate preparation against war would 
consist of three men from every thousand inhabitants in the first line of 
sea and shore forces; nine men from every thousand inhabitants in the 
second line; and twelve men from CA'ery thousand inhabitants in the third 
line; all the rest of the men of the country of military age to be organized 
in the reserves, military, industrial and administrative. 

Arms, munitions and equipment for the first three lines should be 
available on mobilization, with reserve stores for the reserves. 

3. We should begin to try to get it tomorrow morning, early, since 
we cannot possibly be prepared against war within fifteen years if we 
begin our preparations tomorrow and work for them earnestly and con- 
tinuously. There is a bare possibility that if we begin our preparations 
now we may not be too late. 

The expense in dollars from the National Treasury should be ^lat 
sufiicient to pay the professional first line men and to furnish all the 
necessary war tools for all the personnel. 

The expense in time and industry would be measured by the time 
give:: by all the individuals for the defense of their country's riglits. 

After all, is it not "all leather and prunello" to answer your three 
questions ? 

We, the people, all know the correct answers and we, the people, will 
continue to shirk facing the facts brought out by these questions as we 
of the present and passing generations, our forbears for the last hundred 
and twenty-five years and our truly representative legislative and executive 
servants have always shirked facing any facts bearing upon real prepared- 
ness against war. 

For nearly a centui*y, or, more exactly, ever since the Canning Doctrine 
was promulgated by Monroe, we have depended for the protection of our 



34 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

international rights upon the goodness of the Good Lord in combination 
with the power of the British fleet. 

All present indications point to our continuing our- dependence upon 
that same combination. 

Faithfully yours, 

(Signed) Wm. W. Kimball. 

From HON. EIVLVIET D. BOYLE, Governor of Nevada. 

Executive Chamber, Carson City, 

March 22, 1916, 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — I am in receipt of your letter of the 17th instant 
requesting an expression of opinion upon the subject of national defense. 
Replying ^o your inquiries in order, I give as my opinion: 

1. That we do need armed preparedness for our protection and 
probably will continue to need such preparedness for many years to come. 

2. I regret my inability to comment intelligently regarding the size 
of the army which the United States should have. I do believe, however, 
that none of the schemes yet proposed in Congress provide for adequate 
force. 

3. We need armed preparedness at once and should procure it prac- 
tically at any cost. Very truly yours, 

(Signed) Emmet D. Boyle. 

From THOMAS ROBINS, Secretary of the Naval Consulting Board of the 

United States. 

13 Park Row, New York, 

March 30, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — 1. Unless we quickly prepare for defense, our 
learned President will be in a position to add the final chapter to his 
excellent history of the United States. 

2. Os Universal military service. 

b. A Navy that will rank a good second in the navies of the world. 

c. An alliance with England and France. 

3. As fast as the necessary money can be provided without stressing 
the country's financial resources beyond the elastic limit. In the meantime, 
no Federal monies to be appropriated for public buildings, rivers or 
harbors. Very truly yours, 

(Signed) Thomas Robins. 

From REAR-ADMIRAL BRADLEY A. FISKE, U. S. N. 

Stoneleigh Court, Washington, D. C, 

Mar. 31, 1916. 
My dear Sir: — Thank you for your letter of Mar. 27, which did not reach 
me until today. 

1. My answer to your first question is Yes. 

2. My answer to your second question is, A fleet on each coast equal 
to the fleet of any nation on that side of the United States with whom 
it is reasonably possible that we may get into war within the next ten 
years. 

3. As soon as possible, and at the expense necessary to attain it. 

Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) Bbadlet A. Fiske. 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 35 

From DAVID BISPHAM, Noted Singer. 

The Royalton, 44 West 44tli St., New York, 

April 1, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — In reply to your letter, I may say in general that I 
am decidedly of the opinion that as a nation we stand in the greatest need 
of armed preparedness for our protection against foes within our borders, 
at the present moment, and enemies from without who may, at any time, 
loom menacingly upon our horizon. 

What measures of preparedness would be adequate, or at what expense, 
I am not able to say, but that we should prepare individually and col- 
lectively, and set about doing so at once, I am absolutely sure. 

Faithfully yours, 

(Signed) David Bispham. 

From HAMILTON HOLT, Author and Lecturer on International Peace; 
Editor, The Independent. 

119 West 40th St., New York. 

March 31, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — Your letter of March 17th I find on my desk after 
returning from my Western lecture trip, where I spoke for four weeks on 
the League to Enforce Peace. 

In response to your questions, I wish to say : 

1. We do need armed preparedness at the present moment. 

2. I should increase our naval and military forces about the same as 
suggested by the President of the United States. 

3. We should have it as soon as we can, but I think that with proper 
efficiency methods introduced into our army and navy, and the useless posts 
and yards cut down, etc., we probably could save nearly a hundred million 
dollars a year, which is the extra amount asked for by the President in 
order to carry out his program. Therefore I believe we could carry 
through this new program if we wanted to on only a little more than the 
present expenditure. 

Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) Hamilton Holt. 

From CAPTAIN LAURANCE ANGEL, Distinguished Graduate of Army 
School of the Line and Graduate of Army Staff College. 

New York, 
March 2.5, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — During the period of my service as an officer of 
the United States Army, I have had exceptional opportunities of learning 
what are our real needs for national defense and how actual is our danger 
at the present time because of our weakness. 

The military history of nations proves without exception that a nation 
both rich and weak is certain to be attacked and plundered by nations poor 
and strong. 

When the present European War is over, we shall be at once the 
richest and the weakest of all the great nations, and our danger will be 
exactly proportionate to the enticement of our wealth and the lack of 
fear that may be entertained by our enemies for our measures for defense. 

The amount of our preparedness should be determined absolutely by 
its sufficiency. We need enough, and no more, amply to insure us against 



36 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

molestation. We need such measures more than any other nation, and we 
can better afford to have them than any other nation, and there is not 
a moment to be lost. 

We should not be in the least deterred by any expenditure which the 
necessities of the case make it evident should be incurred, because our 
national existence is at stake. 

Very sincerely yours, 

(Signed) Laubance Angel. 

Fro.n COLONEL ROBERT M. THOMPSON, President Navy League of 
the United States. 

San Francisco, Cal., 

March 28, 1916. 
My deir Mr. Maxim: — Your favor of March 18th, forwarded to me from 
Washington, has just arrived, and by return mail I answer your questions. 

To your first question I answer yes. 

To your second question I answer that we should have a Navy adequate 
to hold" the sea against the power of any military nation that might 
possUily invade us. I do not consider England such a nation. It follows 
that Germany on the Atlantic and Japan on the Pacific have set the 
standard to which we must measure up. Our present Navy is ample to 
give us control of the Pacific, if all of it is put into the Pacific. No one 
knows what the navy of Germany is today, nor what it will be by the 
end of the war. 

If the English and German fleets come together, both of them will 
be very seriously diminished, if not entirely destroyed. In my opinion, 
after the close of the war, when the European nations are once settled 
down, the building of battleships will be stopped for some time, as all the 
nations will be heavily stfained to pay the interest on their war 
obligations. 

It seems to me, therefore, that we might look forward to additional 
building to make our Navy equal to the German Navy at the outbreak of 
the war, that is, 22 dreadnaughts and 4 battle cruisers. Of these 8 are 
already authorized, so 14 dreadnaughts and 4 battle cruisers, with the 
proper percentage of destroyers, submarines, aeroplanes and auxiliaries 
necessary to make a properly balanced fleet should be built as rapidly as 
possible. ,-.. . 

This can be done by an issue of $500,000,000 4% Bonds, which if sold 
as required in payment of the vessels as constructed, would average due 
in about twenty-two years from the date of authorization. If $14,000,000 
a year were paid into a sinking fund, it would provide for the payment 
of the bonds at maturity, and $20,000,000 a year would provide for the 
payment of the interest on these bonds — making a total cost of 
$34,000,000 a year. 

Today our annual appropriations include about $65,000,000 for con- 
struction. The proceeds of the bonds would replace this, and after 
covering the interest and sinking fund of $34,000,000, there would be 
$31,000,000 left to apply to the extra expenses of more officers and men, 
more fuel, more munitions, etc. 

If we make large expenditures for submarines and aeroplanes, we 
might require an additional $15,000,000 a year, and if the question can 
be approached without prejudice, and with businesslike common sense, we 
can have in three years what ought to be a sufficient navy, without any 
material extra taxation. 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 37 

If we were going to reorganize the army, I would take every boy 
when he reached the age of eighteen, who was not disqualified for physical 
reasons or because his labor was necessary for the support of some person 
dependent upon him, and train him to be a soldier. This ought to mean 
somewhere from 600,000 to 700,000 boys called to the colors. Somebody 
today is educating, feeding and clothing these boys. The Government could 
do tins without any increased economic cost. 

In connection with the army drill, if a system of schools were main- 
tained at which the boj^s could receive the same intellectual training that 
they would receive at home (and Annapolis and West Point demonstrate 
that this can be done), there will be no economic cost through either 
increased consumption or lack of preparation for future citizenship. On 
the contrary, such training and teaching would undoubtedly elevate the 
average of citizenship. 

In answer to your third question, we should begin at once and com- 
plete our preparation as rapidly as we possibly can. 

My foregoing answers show that in my opinion this can be done 
without any material increase in our economic cost. The increase in the 
annual expenditures of the United States due to their assuming the 
expense of educating and maintaining the boys would, of course, be large, 
but if we have any business in us, and if we can keep out politics and 
grafting, it will be, after all, merely a question of bookkeeping. As to the 
limit of expense, I am a " peace-at-any-price " man. I am so thoroughly 
impressed with the horrors of war that I would keep them out of this 
country at any cost measured in money. 

Very cordially yours, 

(Signed) Robert M. Thompson. 



From HON. JAMES B. McCREARY, Ex-Governor of Kentucky. 

Lexington, Ky., 
March 22, 1916. 
Dear Sir: — Your letter of March 17, 1916, was duly received. . . . 

The first thing that the people of every nation have a right to demand 
of the nation's rulers is protection from danger at home and abroad. 
George Washington said, " If we desire to avoid insult we must be able 
to repel it." If we desire to preserve peace, one of the most powerful 
instruments of our prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times 
prepared for war. 

Respectfully, 

(Signed) James B. McCbeabt. 



From POULTNEY BIGELOW, Noted Author. 

Bigelow Homestead, Maiden on Hudson, New York, 

March 22, 1916. 
Dear Sir: — You and I agree on essentials. Every American should be a 
soldier before acquiring the right to vote. That is a self-evident proposi- 
tion and has been recognized as such from the beginning of things. 

Yours, 

(Signed) Poultnet Bigelow, 



38 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

From FATHER JOHN T. PROUT, Pastor Church of St. John the Martyr, 

New York. 

250 East 72nd St., New York, 

March 20, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — Ans. No. I, Taking human nature as it is, we will need 
armed preparedness the same as we need our fire department and our 
police force. 

II. Our preparedness should be with a view to our two only possible 
adversaries, Japan and Germany. 

III. Preparedness should commence at once, and the defense should 
be actually and unmistakably adequate, irrespective of expense. 

Yours very truly, 

(Signed) John T. Prout. 

t 

From MRS. GEORGE E. PICKETT, Widow of General Pickett, who led 
the famous charge at Gettysburg. 

The Ontario, Washington, D. C, 

March 21, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — Your letter of the 17th is received this morning. 

The symposium upon national defense will be very interesting and I 
shall be glad to see it. Of course I believe in preparation for all the events 
and conditions that may exist, preparation for life, for death, for peace, 
for war. We have recently had frightful object lessons in the fate of small 
nations with no opportunity for preparing for defense, and in the inade- 
quacy of larger ones who shut their eyes to the necessity of preparation, 
under the impression that if for any reason they do not see a thing it is 
positive proof that the thing' does not exist. 

The details of preparation, however, I must leave for the politicians to 
quarrel over, and trust the result to that beneficent Power which Mr. 
Evarts said " takes care of children, fools and the United States," hoping 
that in some miraculous way the Republic may be kept alive despite her 
guides and guardians. I could not even venture a conjecture as to the 
proper or probable expense of an eflFort at protection, but however high it 
might be I think that the destruction of our Great Republic would cost 
more. 

With love for you both, earnest and sincere, 

(Signed) Motheb Pickett. 

From MRS. JOHN A. LOGAN, Widow of the famous General Logan of the 

Civil War. 

Washington, D. C, 
March 31, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — In reply to your questions, allow me to say that 
it should be apparent to every citizen of the United States that armed 
preparedness is indispensable for the protection of the American Nation and 
its institutions and for the perpetuation of this great Republic. 

It has been demonstrated that either through maladministration or 
unpreparedness the United States has failed to protect American citizens 
in the Republic of Mexico or those living in the State of Texas, just across 
an imaginary geographical boundary line. 

Promptness and unity of action is absolutely necessary to meet the 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 39 

emergency occasioned by the serious situation in Mexico, where a few 
hundred revolutionists are holding the United States at bay while our 
citizens are being murdered. 

Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) Mrs. John A. Logan. 

From CAPTAIN JACK CRAWFORD, the Poet Scout, Former Chief of 

Scouts, United States Army. 

745 Thrall Ave., Woodhaven, L. I., N. Y., 

March 31, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Maxim: — In response to the request in yovir letter of the 17th 
instant, my answer is, because we have honor, love freedom, and have 
homes and loved ones, and because most of the world today is on the 
warpath, and because the present war has demonstrated that modern 
and enlightened nations are capable of waging war as cruelly, mercilessly 
and with purposes as predatory as ever, we do need to defend our price- 
less possessions. 

We need adequate defense, and we need to get it in the shortest 
possible time, without any consideration whatsoever of expense. 

When our lives, our property, the sanctity of our homes, the honor 
of our mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, are at stake, it is not a question 
which can be weighed with dollars. 

I want to say to you, Mr. Maxim, and to all who may read this, 
that in my opinion your work for national defense is the most unselfish, 
the most generous, the most able, and altogether the most important, and 
has had and is having a greater influence to rouse this country to its 
needs than the work of any other man or group of men who have devoted 
themselves to this noble cause. 

Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) J. W. Crawford, 
"Capt. Jack." 

Self-preservation always first — 

A law we dare not disobey. 

Our motto is. In God ice Trust, 

But hitild a Navy ivhile wc pray. 

"God bless you," William Jennings said. 

When Wilson's cabinet he rent, 

Then stumped where angels dare not tread — 

God help you, was what Billy meant. 

" Capt. Jack." 

From REAR-ADMIRAL F. F. FLETCHER, U. S. N., Commander of the 
Atlantic Fleet. 

U. S. S. Wyoming, Flagship, Guantanamo Bav, Cuba, 

April 2, 1916. 
Sir: — Referring to your letter of March 17, 1916, containing certain 
questions on the subject of preparedness, I am of the opinion that: 

1. A nation should be prepared to defend its policies and its inter- 
ests; and that a nation of the wealth of the United States should be 
as well able to provide for the cost of preparedness as are other nations. 



40 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

2. Preparedness, to be adequate, should be such as to permit defense 
against all those likely to threaten our interests, or to challenge our 
policies. 

3. If adequate preparedness is decided upon it is logical to obtain 
this preparedness at the earliest practicable moment. 

Very sincerely, 

(Signed) F. F. Fletcher. 

From HON. GEORGE von LENGERKE MEYER, Former Secretary of the 

Navy. 

Aiken, S. C, 
April 1st, 1916. 
Dear Sir: — In answer to your letter dated the 21st of March, it is very 
important that we should have immediate armed preparedness to insure 
our Coast from attack and safeguard the interests of our people. Millions 
spent at once would be worth more than billions after the War has started. 
We should not lose sight of the fact that a weak threat of a well-prepared 
nation is worth far more than a strong threat of a weak nation. The navy 
should be the strong right arm of the Government, and with an adequate 
fleet, well balanced and thoroughly prepared, no troops will be landed in 
this country for foreign invasion until the fleet is destroyed. Therefore, 
our fleet should be increased by the building of four battle-ships and four 
battle cruisers at once and a building program of auxiliaries such as the 
General Board has recommended in the report which was originally 
smothered by Secretary Daniels. We should increase the enlistment of 
blue jackets by 25,000 and have a National Reserve of the same number. 
We should have an army of 250,000 regulars and compulsory service based 
on the Swiss system, all of which should be authorized by the present 
Congress, and should they fail to do so, the people should make themselves 
heard in the November election. 

Faithfully yours, 

(Signed) G. v. L. Meyeb. 



LETTERS 

FEOM EMINENT LEADERS OF AMERICAN THOUGHT 
WHO DO NOT BELIEVE IN NATIONAL 
DEFENSE— ARMED PREPAREDNESS 
AGAINST WAR. 

From REV. DR. CHARLES E. JEFFERSON, Pastor Broadway Taber- 
nacle Church, and a leading writer and speaker against National 
Defense by force of Arms. 

March 18, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — In my judgment this is not the time for the 
United States to make any substantial addition to its military and 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 41 

naval equipment. My reason for thinking this is that we have something 
far more difficult and important on our hands. The theory of military 
preparedness as a guarantee of international justice or peace has heen 
exploded. The philosophy of Armed Peace has been shot to pieces before 
our eyes. Military preparedness as a world policy has been found to 
mean war. Nations cannot run races in naval tonnage and howitzers 
without fighting. Governments cannot pile up explosives without sooner 
or later a world-shattering explosion. 

We must try a new way. The world must be organized. There must 
be an international tribunal, and an international police force. To get 
these the United States ought to lead the way. She will come to her task 
with greater influence if she shows her faith by her works. If she has 
faith in the reasonableness of men and of nations, let her throw her whole 
strength just now into the elaboration of a plan of world organization. 
Let all our greatest men set to work upon this. Let the President and 
Congress give it their earnest attention. Let large appropriations be 
voted to carry it through. Let our government say boldly that it believes 
the time has arrived for a league of nations to safeguard the peace of the 
world. No additional enginery of war should be provided by us until this 
European war is over. We shall know better then how to take hold of 
the enormous world problem which the war has created. We shall have 
a clearer brain, and a more quiet heart and a more sensitive conscience 
if we come into the council chamber of the nations without a big club. 
Some men say, Let us build up a mighty army and navy, and then work 
for the international tribunal. That method has been tried in Europe, 
and it does not work. Big armaments block the way to tribunals of rea- 
son. Let us try a different method. Let us work with all our might for 
at least five years to bring about a world court and a world police force, 
and if any nation refuses to cooperate in the great enterprise, let the 
United States and the other nations then take whatever precautions may 
be necessary to curb the power of the recalcitrant nation for mischief. 

Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) Charles E. Jeffeeson. 



From REV. DR. JOHN HAYNES HOLMES, Pastor, Church of the Mes- 
siah, New York City, and a leading writer and speaker against 
National Defense by force of Arms. 

March 17, 1916. 
Dear Sir: — I thank you for the honor which you do me in asking me 
to give answer to your questions on the subject of preparedness. 1 send 
you, herewith, a statement. You may feel free to use it in your sym- 
posium, on the single condition that you print it complete. May I also 
add the request that you permit me to see your symposium when it is 
published. 

Believe me, Very sincerely yours, 

(Signed) John Haynes Holmes. 

Statement: 

Your questions involve two problems — (1) that of the specific prob- 
lem of military policy now before Congress; and (2) that of the general 
philosophy of " preparedness " as a means of national security. 

As regards the first question, let me say that I am unreservedly op- 



42 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

posed to the increase of our army by a single soldier, our navy by a single 
torpedo-boat, our equipment by a single rifle, at this moment of world- 
disaster. Such increase is unnecessary, in view of the fact that the pres- 
ent conflict is speedily bringing exhaustion to all .great powers of the 
earth; it is unwise, in view of the fact that it would inevitably be inter- 
preted as a hostile act and therefore be made the source of endless sus- 
picions and hatreds by peoples seeking sympathy and not fresh menace 
in their distress; and it is immoral, in view of the fact that an armed 
or arming America is the one thing best calculated to defeat the prospect 
of immediate or progressive disarmament by all the belligerent nations at 
the close of the Great War. Even though " preparedness " were necessary 
for our security, I should still oppose it on the plea that, at such an hour 
as this, we must venture the hazard of insecurity, for the sake of the 
larger good of humanity. In place of " preparedness," I venture to plead 
for a rigid investigation of the expenditures of moneys appropriated for 
armament in recent years, which, if honestly and effectively used, should 
have given us an army and navy more than adequate for even extreme 
conditions of national defense. 

As regards the second question, let me say that I regard the whole 
philosophy of " preparedness " as essentially futile and vicious. The 
present War is proof of the fact that " preparedness " means war and not 
peace, insecurity and not security. Europe has tried to the full the policy 
of " armed preparedness for .... protection in the present state of 
armed preparedness of other nations, in the absence of an international 
tribvmal for the judicial settlement of disputes, and in the absence of an 
international armed police force " — and the Great War is the perfect 
demonstration of its failure. For America now to adopt this policy, would 
be only to make inevitable a like calamity for herself in the not distant 
future. With preparation for peace, as with the resumption of specie 
payments, " the way to begin, is to begin." I therefore plead for America 
at this moment to disarm as a pledge of her faith in the good will of other 
nations, to appropriate the millions now contemplated for war expendi- 
tures to works of beneficent and constructive relief in Europe as evidence 
of her own good will, and to organize at once the high and intricate task 
of statesmanship involved in bringing order to a disordered world. For 
this achievement, the United States, by reason of her geographical security, 
her immunity from international jealousies and suspicions, her mingled 
population, and her democratic ideals, is the appointed nation; and now, 
by reason of the Great War's hourly demonstration of the hideous futility 
of arms, is the appointed hour. 

(Signed) John Haynes Holmes. 

From DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN, Chancellor, Stanford University, 
California, Chief Director World Peace Foundation, and most noted 
of the opponents of Armed Preparedness in America. 

March 22, 1916. 
My dear Sir: — In answer to your kind letter of March 17, 1916, let me 
Bay: 

1. In view of the disorganized condition of Europe and in view of 
the overreaching of nations in desperate straits, it seems to me proper 
that we should immediately look to our defenses in case we should 
become suddenly entangled in the conflict. It seems to me that sucb 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 43 

danger as may exist, whether from our own hysteria, from foreign 
plotters in our country, or from disregard of neutral rights on the part 
of other countries is immediate, a present and not a future matter. 
After the war ends I do not think it possible that any nation would have 
the desire or the power to attack us. "' A nation is like a bee, as it 
stings, it dies." The experience of other great wars allows us to expect 
a strong desire in every quarter that such a catastrophe shall not happen 
again. The religious wars which had raged for centuries were closed 
forever by the Treaty of Miinster. Everybody was sick and tired of the 
ordeal of battle in religion. The treaty which closes this war is likely 
to do away with the principle of unbridled sovereignty and of the 
" Anarchy of Armament." 

2. I have no special knowledge as to degrees of " preparedness." 
The more officers trained for war, the stronger will be their influence 
towards war. This statement does not apply to all cases, but the world 
over the determination of the military groups is the strongest war incen- 
tive. A great navy is less to be feared than a great army, but all 
needless expenditure is a source of corruption. It seems vitally necessary 
that the nations of Europe should reduce their armament, and perhaps 
place it at the service of an International Commission of some kind. 
There is danger that a great navy on our part would operate against 
this result. 

3. The arguments for the necessity of a greater na\j do not seem 
convincing. Certain additions or reforms are doubtless reasonable, but 
rather than a more powerful naval defense we need a national disposition 
to remove points of differences with other nations, and especially we need 
some provision, judicial or constitutional, which shall deter any indi- 
vidual state from legislation likely to have international results. I am 
opposed to military preparedness on any grand scale as inherently dan- 
gerous. I am opposed to any increase of national debt for such purposes, 
and I approve of the Shafroth amendment to the general appropriation 
bill as follows: 

That if at any time before the appropriations authorized 
by this Act shall have been contracted for, there shall have 
been established, with the co-operation of the United States 
of America, an international tribunal or tribunals com- 
petent to secure peaceful determinations of all international 
disputes, and ^t-hich shall render unnecessary the maintenance 
of competitive armaments, then and in that case such naval 
expenditures as may be inconsistent with the engagements 
made in the establishment of such tribunal or tribunals shall 
be suspended, if so ordered by the President of the United 
States. 

The main question does not concern the number of ships we shall 
build, but the general attitude of the nation towards the problems of 
unchecked sovereignty and the aggressive use of force and intimidation 
in diplomacy as opposed to " international good behavior " and an inter- 
national tribunal for the adjustment of differences. 

Very truly yours, 

(Signed) David Stare Jordan. 



44 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

From THE ANTI-" PREPAREDNESS " COMMITTEE. 

Headquarters, Munsey Building, Washington, D. C. 

March 25, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — We are enclosing you manifesto of our Com- 
mittee in which Miss Addams concurs. 

Very sincerely yours, 

Anti-" Peepabedness " Committee. 

THE ANTI" PREPAREDNESS " COMMITTEE. 

Headquarters, Munsey Building, Washington, D. C. 

We are a committee of American citizens formed to protest against the 
attempt to* stampede this nation into a dangerous program of military 
and naval expansion. We believe that no danger of invasion threatens 
this country and that there is no excuse for hasty, ill-considered action. 
We protest against the effort being made to divert the public mind from 
those preparations for world peace based on international agreement which 
it might be our country's privilege to initiate at the close of this War. 
And we protest no less against the effort being made to divert public 
funds, sorely needed in constructive programs for national health and 
well-being, into the manufacture of engines of death. 

We are against the " preparedness " program, so called, because it 
is unnecessary, because it endangers our most precious institutions, and 
because it is contrary to all that is best in our national traditions. 

Believing that this statement represents the thoughtful conclusions 
of a large number of patriotic Americans, we urge them to support us 
in the following program : 

GO SLOW ON PREPAREDNESS. Our immediate purpose is to 
prevent any unusual expenditure for armament during the present session 
of Congress. 

STOP THE WASTE ON PREPAREDNESS. We demand public 
investigation of our present huge war budget so that every dollar now 
spent for the Army and Naw may bring 100 per cent of efficiency. 

WHO WANTS PREPAREDNESS? We stand for a Congressional 
investigation of the sources of the demand for a large increase in Army 
and Na^'v appropriations. 

TAKING THE PROFIT OUT OF PREPAREDNESS. We stand for 
taking all possibility of private profit out of armament manufacture. 

WHO IS TO PAY FOR PREPAREDNESS? We hold that any 
increased expense for armament should be met by income and inheritance 
taxes, and not by taxes which place additional burden on the poor. 

A NEW FOREIGN POLICY INSTEAD OF PREPAREDNESS. We 
hold with the President that the time has come to develop the Monro6 
doctrine, with its inherent dangers and difficulties, into a real Pan- 
American union, and therefore urge that a fifth Pan-American conference 
be called early in 1916, and that our delegates be instructed to recommend 
a federation of the twenty-one American republics in the interests of 
peace and democracy. 

THE "YELLOW PERIL" AND PREPAREDNESS. Since the ques- 
tions at issue between America and tlie Orient are serious and complex, 
we urge, as a rational approach to their solution, the appointment of 
an expert commission, representing Japan, China and the United States 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 45 

to study these questions and make recommendations to the various coun- 
tries involved, after considering all interests concerned, local, national 
and international. 
Signed: 

Lillian D. Waxd, Chairman. 
Paul U. Kellogg, Vice-Chairman. 
L. HoLLiNGswoRTH WooD, Treasurer. 
Crystal Eastman, Secretary. 
Charles T. Hallinan, Editorial Director. 
Jane Addams, John Haynes Holmes, 

Allan L. Benson, Mrs. Florence Kelley, 

SOPHONISBA BrECKENRIDGE, AlICE LeWISOHN, 

Max Eastman, Frederick Lynch, 

Mrs. Glendoweb Evans, James P. Warbasse, 

Zona Gale, Stephen S. Wise. 

This is a National Crisis. If you are with us wire or write to your 
Congressman to Go Slow on " Preparedness." 

From ELBERT HUBBARD II. 

East Aurora, Erie Co., N. Y. 

March 23, 1916. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — I received your letter a few days ago, asking my 
opinion about the preparedness proposition. Frankly, Mr. Maxim, I cannot 
understand how a man in my position, having nothing but some general 
ideas and never having made a study of military or naval situation, could 
in any way make any kind of an adequate estimate of what is the right 
thing to do. 

Undoubtedly I would be just as quick to join the army myself as 
anyone in case of the invasion of our land by a foreign army; but when 
it comes to a question of telling just how far this country should prepare 
against such a possibility, I must beg to be excused. Really, I do not 
know. 

I do not believe in war, anyway, and I am strongly opposed to methods 
that would precipitate a war. My viewpoint, and I might say the view- 
point of The Roycrofters, is expressed plainly and broadly in the two 
sheets I am enclosing. I do not think it answers the proposition the way 
you would like to have it answered, but — them's our sentiments! 

With kindest regards and best wishes, 

Yours very sincerely, 

(Signed) Elbert Hubbabd XL 

The Enclosure Referred to in Mr. Hubbard's Letter: 
ANSWERING MR. HUDSON MAXIM'S THREE QUESTIONS. 

A — I believe that war both offensively and defensively has successfully 
demonstrated itself a FAILURE. Aye, worse, the murderer of men's bodies 
and the corrupter of men's minds, and in so far as we Americans are 
concerned, the father of FEAR. 

B — I believe that Preparedness now, as always, is only a name for 
Preparation for War, — however righteous the intentions. (I believe His- 
tory proves this statement.) I believe that an UNARMED Country may 
survive but I know that an ARMED Country will not survive. 



46 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

C— I believe that it takes more COURAGE to stand UNARMED for 
RIGHT in the light of day, than to skulk inside Fortresses with a dagger 
in your boot and a pistol in your hijj pocket, and dare some one to stick 
his head up over the wall. 

D — I believe that disarmament will come when some one Great Nation 
risks everything "on one turn of pitch and toss"; abolishes its Ammuni- 
tion Factories, razes its Forts, or makes of them Export Trade Depots; 
turns its Army and Navy Academies into Agricultural and Commercial 
Institutes ; gives its Soldiers and Sailors a CONSTRUCTIVE job, and says 
to the World: "War is murder, and to save the lives of millions of men 
to come, we will disarm noic; we will take the chance; we invite you to 
join us ! We are Americans, and we stand for ' life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness! ' " 

E — I believe that Opportunity is pounding on the door and calling to 
America Come! You shall do more for civilization than did Ancient 
Greece! — to you is the honor and glory of eliminating bloody, brutal 
War! " — And we in under the bed toy with our cap pistol and our honor 
and hesitate. 

F— I believe, " Thou shalt not kill." 

(Signed) Elbebt Hubbabd II. 



OPINIONS AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE- 
ARMED PREPAREDNESS AGAINST 
WAR 

EXPRESSED IN THE WRITINGS AND PUBLIC 
SPEECHES OF THE MOST NOTED OPPO- 
NENTS OF NATIONAL DEFENSE. 

In the foregoing pages I have presented some letters from leaders of 
American thought upon both sides of the question of our needs for pre- 
paredness for national defense against war. 

As I have already pointed out, these letters have been printed without 
any criticism or comment by me or by anyone else, in order that the 
reader may, upon reading them, form his opinion according to his own 
imderstanding of the evidence presented, and from his confidence or lack 
of it in the ability and sincerity of those who have written the letters. 

In the following pages I have given at considerable lengtli the opinions 
of some of the most noted pacifists, both those who take an extreme posi- 
tion against all forms of armed preparedness and those who occupy a mid- 
dle ground; and I have followed these opinions with some comments of 
my own, merely when and where necessary to provide the reader an op- 
portimity of seeing the subject in its various aspects. 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 47 

MR. BRYAN'S OPINION 

I here reproduce in its entirety a booklet issued and circulated by the 
pacifists, under the title "Do You Advocate Peace or War?" which con- 
tains a long speech by Hon. William Jennings Bryan. 

The booklet also contains a Statement given to Press of North Caro- 
lina, November 20, 1915, by Hon. Claude Kitchin, which is also repro- 
duced here in its entirety. 

THE WAR IN EUROPE 
AND ITS LESSONS FOR US 

Address delivered by WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN at Johnstown, 
Pa., November 1, 1915. This address presents the line of argument which 
he has,~ during the past four months, followed in urging peace and opposing 
preparedness. 

Mr. Chairman: I appreciate the opportunity which this occasion 
affords to present to the people of Johnstown a subject which is in their 
minds and on my heart. I am grateful, too, for the gracious words which 
have been employed in presenting me to you. If you feel, as I do, that 
the Chairman has been more than generous, please remember that one in 
public life must be over-praised by his friends in order to make up for the 
unjust criticism which he receives from his enemies. 

While I have found receptive audiences all over the country, there is 
no community in which I would expect a more sympathetic hearing than 
in this, because the distinguished gentleman who represents you in Con- 
gress views the subject from the same standpoint that I do. Whenever 
a new question arises upon which the people have not expressed them- 
selves, it is important that each individual should make known his views 
in order that public opinion may represent the voters generally and not 
a portion of the people only. The country would be fortunate if all of our 
public men were as candid and as courageous in taking a position as 
Congressman Bailey, who honors you as he is honored by you. 

In order that you may follow me the more easily I shall outline in 
advance the address which I am to deliver to you. It naturally divides 
itself into three parts: first, the war as it is and its injury to neutrals; 
second, the false philosophy out of which the war has grown and the 
natural results of that false philosophy; and, third, the way out, or the 
road to permament peace. The subject is presented with a view to em- 
phasizing the lessons which this country can draw from the conflict be- 
yond the ocean. 

No matter by what standard you measure this war, it is without 
precedent or parallel. I will not call it the greatest war in history, for 
the word great implies something more than bigness. When we speak of 
a great institution or a great movement, we have in mind something more 
than mere size. There have been, I think, greater wars than this, but none 
that approached it in bigness. It is the biggest war ever known if we 
measure it by the population of the nations at war — never before have so 
many people lived in belligerent nations. It is also the biggest war of 
which history tells if we measure it by the number of enlisted men who 
face each other upon its many battle fields. The estimates run from 



48 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

twenty-one to thirty-one millions. Rather than risk exaggeration, let us 
take the lowest estimate; it is sufficient to make the war impressive. In 
fact, the number is so great that the mind can scarcely comprehend it. 
Let me translate it into everyday language by comparing it with our vot- 
ing population. We have never cast as many as twenty-one million votes 
at an election. That means that if all in every State who have on a single 
day exercised the right of suffrage could be gathered together in one place, 
the concourse, vast as it would be, would fall several millions short of the 
number now actually engaged in fighting. 

More than two million have been wounded thus far. If on any part 
of the globe one himdred thousand persons were swept to death by pesti- 
lence, or flood, or famine, the world would stand appalled; and yet, in a 
little more than a year, more than twenty times one hundred thousand 
have been smmmoned to meet their God, and everyone owes his death to the 
deliberate intent and act of a fellowman. More than five million have 
been wounded — this will give you some idea of the awful toll that this 
awful war is exacting in life and suffering. 

If we measure the war by the destructiveness of the implements em- 
ployed, nothing so horrible has ever been known before. They used to 
be content to use the earth's surface for the maneuvers of war, but now 
they have taken possession of the air, and thunder bolts more deadly than 
the thunder-bolts of Jove fall as if from the clouds on unsuspecting peo- 
ple. And they have taken possession of the ocean's depths as well, and 
death dealing torpedoes rise from out the darkness to multiply the perils 
of the sea. They have substituted a long range rifle for a short range 
rifle, a big mouthed gun for a little mouthed gun, a dreadnought for a 
battle ship, and a super-dreadnought for a dreadnought, to which they 
have added the submarine. And they now pour liquid fire on battle lines 
and suffocate soldiers in the trenches with poisonous gases. Inventive 
genius has been exhausted to find new ways by which man can kill his 
fellowman ! 

And the nations which are at war are not barbarous nations — they 
are among the most civilized of the earth; neither are they heathen na- 
tions — they are among the Christian nations of the globe. They all wor- 
ship the same God; and most of them approach that God through the 
same mediator. They offer their supplications to a common Heavenly 
Father and then rise up to take each other's lives. 

It would be bad enough if the penalties of this war fell only upon 
the guilty; but a vast majority of the men who die and of the women 
who weep have had neither part nor voice in determining whether there 
should be peace or war. It would be bad enough if the burdens of this 
war fell only upon the nations participating in it, but like a mighty flood, 
this war has inundated the world, and neutral nations as well as bel- 
ligerent nations are suffering. 

The Latin-speaking Republics are kept busy night and day trying to 
preserve neutrality; they maintain an extensive patrol over the three mile 
strip along their coasts to keep big nations from violating their neutrality 
by fighting within their territorial limits. And all the neutral nations are 
bearing burdens of taxation which would not be necessary but for the war; 
they are compelled to resort to new and imusual methods for the collecting 
of revenue because the war has put their fiscal systems out of joint. 

The trade of the world is deranged and our nation, the greatest of 
the neutral nations and the one with the largest foreign commerce, is 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 49 

suffering more than any of the others. When the war began we were 
using the ships of other nations largely for the carrying of our merchan- 
dise, when, all at once, the very nations whose ships we employed became 
involved in war, and then one side drove the ships of the other side into our 
harbors and compelled them to intern there, and, according to International 
Law, there these ships must remain during the war, idle and useless, 
while we sufl'er for lack of ships. And the nations that drove these 
merchantmen from the seas are not under any obligation, according to 
International Law, to supply vessels to take the place of the ones of which 
they have deprived us. On the contrary, they are at liberty to withdraw 
their own vessels for use in the transport service, and to some extent they 
have done so, still further crippling the carrying trade of the ocean. Be- 
cause of lack of ships and because of the increased risks of the sea it has 
sometimes cost seven times as much to send a bale of cotton across the ocean 
as it cost in normal times. When on the Pacific Coast a few weeks ago, 
I learned that it then cost nearly three times as much to transport a 
bushel of wheat to Europe as it cost in time of peace. These are some of 
the burdens which neutral nations are bearing; and, in addition to these 
all of them are in danger of being drawn into this war, although none 
of them desire to take part in it. 

When you understand International Law as now interpreted and ap- 
plied, you will feel as I do, that International Law seems to have been 
written for the benefit of nations at war rather than for the benefit of 
nations at peace. I am hoping that, when this war is over, we shall be 
able to secure such changes as may be necessary to write International 
Law upon the theory that peace, and not war, is the normal relation be- 
tween nations — amendments Avhich will make the rule read, not as it seems 
to now; namely, that nations at peace may attend to their own business 
so long as they do not interfere with the fight; bvit will provide that 
nations that do fight must not disturb the peace, the commerce, or the 
prosperity of the nations that prefer to substitute reason for force in the 
settlement of their international differences. 

I have called attention to the outstanding features of this war that 
you might comprehend its magnitude; and I have mentioned some of the 
injuries suffered by neutrals that you might imderstand how earnestly 
the neutral nations long for the return of peace, but I cannot conclude this 
part of my address without impressing upon your minds two facts which 
it is necessary for us to keep in mind. If all the newspapers had obeyed 
the President and observed neutrality his tasks would not have been so 
delicate and the people would have been better informed. But while most 
of the newspapers have tried to be neutral, we have had two unneutral 
groups — the pro-ally group and the pro-German group. The pro-ally group 
has emphasized our disputes with Germany, and the pro-German group has 
emphasized our disputes with Great Britain. We have had disputes 
with both; we have protested to Germany against the use she has made of 
submarines, and to Great Britain against interference with our trade with 
neutrals. If you will read the notes which our Government has sent, you 
will find that our rights, as we understand those rights, have been vio- 
lated, not by one side only, but by both sides, and that injuries have come 
to us from both sides. 

This is the first fact which we must keep in mind, and the second 
is related to it; namely, that while both sides have injured us, neither 
side has desired to do so. The injuries which we have suffered have not 



50 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

been intended against us, but have been incidental to the injury which 
each has intended against the other. They are like two men shooting at 
each other in the street, who are too much interested in killing each other 
to pay any attention to the bystanders who get the stray bullets from both 
sides. In order to deal patiently with the problems presented by this war 
it is necessary that we should understand both of these facts — I repeat the 
statement of them — namely, that both sides have injured us, but that 
neither side desired to do so. It would be unfortunate enough for us to 
go to war with a nation that hated us and wanted war with us; God for- 
bid that we shall ever compel a nation to go to war with us if it is not 
an enemy and does not want war with the United States. 

And now allow me to ask you to consider the false philosophy out of 
which this war has grown and the natural results of that false philosophy. 
Before speaking of the real cause, it is worth while to note that some of 
the causes which have produced war in the past are not responsible for 
this war. There have been race wars in history — wars that have been 
the outgrowth of race prejudices which have sometimes extended through 
centuries. But this is not a race war; the races are all mixed up in this 
war. Saxon and Slav are allies; Latin and Frank are allies; Teuton and 
Turk are allies. And now, since Bulgaria has entered the war, Slav is 
fighting Slav, and it is not yet know whether the Greek, if he enters the 
war, will side with Turk or Roman. The races are inexplicably mixed. 

And it is not a religious war. There have been religious wars, although 
we can not understand how a war could arise over a religious diflferenee. 
We have learned to believe that the right to worship God according to the 
dictates of one's conscience is an inalienable right, and it would never 
occur to us that a man would kill another in order to prove that his re- 
ligion is better than the other man's religion. According to our theory, 
if a man desires to prove the superiority of his religion, he lives it, for we 
do not count a religion as worthy of the name if it does not manifest 
itself in the life. There have, however, been religious wars, but this is not 
one of them. On the Bosphorus the crescent and the cross float above the 
same legions ; a Protestant Emperor of Germany is the ally of a Catholic 
Emperor of Austria; and you will find fighting in the same army corps 
representatives of three great branches of the Christian church, Catholics, 
members of the Church of England and members of the Greek church. The 
religions are as badly mixed in this war as the races. 

And it is not a family war. There have been family wars — wars that 
have had their origin in family feuds or in family greed, but in this war 
the families are mixed. The Emperor of Germany, the King of England, 
and the Czar of Russia are cousins, members of one Royal family, although 
you would never suspect from the way they treat each other that they 
"are closely related by ties of blood. 

And there was no cause of war apparent on the surface. Within a 
month of the beginning of the war the rulers who are now fighting each 
other were visiting each other; they were being hospitably received and 
royally entertained. When one of them had a birthday, the others all 
joined in wishing him many happy returns of the day. It would be a 
libel upon the rulers now at war to say that they knew that a cause 
existed adequate to produce such a war. For had they known of the 
existence of such a cause, it would have been their duty to their subjects 
to lay aside social festivities and the exchange of compliments that they 
might join together and remove the cause of war. But without a race 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 51 

cause, a religious cause, a family cause, or any cause visible to the public, 
this war began, and such a war as history has never known! There 
must be a cause and it must be a human cause, for no one who loves God 
would ever blame Him for this inhuman war. It behooves us to find the 
cause, that, knowing the cause, we may, by avoiding it, avoid the con- 
sequences. 

I have tried to find the cause of this war, and, if my analysis of the 
situation is correct, the cause is to be found in a false philosophy — in the 
doctrine tiiat " might makes right." This doctrine was formerly proclaimed 
quite puolicly; now it is no longer openly proclaimed, but it is sometimes 
practiced when the temptation is sufficient. Before you become excited — 
while yuu can yet reason, I appeal to j^ou to set the seal of your condem- 
nation against this brutal, barbarous doctrine that " might makes right." 
And tLat you may see more clearly the importance of reaching a conclu- 
sion and proclaiming it, I call your attention to the fact that there is 
but one code of morals known among men and that is the code that regu- 
lates individual life. If this code of morals is not to be applied to nations, 
then there is no moral code which can be invoked for the regulation of 
international affairs. 

If I were an artist, I would carry with me a canvas and reproduce 
upon it one of McCutcheon's recent cartoons. He represents war and an- 
archy by two brutal looking human figures. Across the breast of war he 
has written " might is right," and across the breast of anarchy the words 
" dynamite is right." I challenge you to draAV a line between the two 
doctrines. The nation that takes the position that it is at liberty to seize 
whatever it has the power to seize, and to hold whatever it has the strength 
to hold; the nation that plants itself upon the doctrine that might makes 
right has no system of logic with which to address itself to citizen or 
subject who, as against his neighbor or as against his government, in- 
vokes the kindred doctrine that dynamite is right. 

If you will take your Bibles and turn back to the story of Naboth's 
vineyard, you will find that Ahab violated three commandments in order 
to secure a little piece of land. The commandments read, "Thou shalt 
not covet"; "Thou shalt not steal"; and "Thou shalt not kill," and 
these commandments are not only without limitation, but they are not 
subject to limitation. 

Take for instance the commandment against covetousness. After 
specifying certain things that must not be coveted, the commandment con- 
cludes with the clause " or anything that is thy neighbor's." If this has 
any meaning, it covers everj'thing. There is no process of reasoning by 
which we can retain that commandment and make it binding upon the 
conscience of the individual if we hold sinless the nation that covets the 
territory of another nation. And yet the coveting of territory has been 
the fruitful cause of war. 

And so with the commandment against stealing. It does not read 
" thou shalt not steal on a small scale," it simply says " thou shalt not 
steal." And yet I am not telling you anything new when I tell you that 
as a rule — not always, but as a rule — it is safer even in this country for 
a man to steal a large sum than a small sum. If he steals a small sum 
he is just a common, vulgar thief and nobody has any respect for him; 
if he has any friends they are careful not to allow the fact to be known. 
If, however, he steals a large sum, he has two advantages over the petty 
thief. In the first place, if he steals enough, he can employ the ablest 



52 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

lawyers, and his lawyers can usually — not always, but usually — ^keep him 
out on bail until he dies a natural death while they discuss technicalities 
in all the courts of the land. And he has a second advantage; if he steals 
a large sum, he can always find enough people to furnish him social com- 
panionship who will be so amazed at his genius that they will never men- 
tion his rascality in his presence. If we find it so difficult to visit the 
same indignation upon grand larceny that we do upon petty larceny we 
must not be surprised if, when one nation steals a large amount from 
another nation, there are some who regard it as an act of patriotism. 

And the commandment against killing does not read that you 
must not kill imless a large number join with you. On the contrary, the 
Bible plainly declares that " though hand join in hand, they shall not be 
unpunished." And it does not say that if you do kill, you should be 
gentle about it and use the most approved methods. On the contrary, 
there is no intimation anywhere that the moral character of the act can 
be changed by the method employed in putting an end to a human life. 
It is just a plain, blunt " thou shalt not kill," and yet as we read history 
we are compelled to admit that it has been easier for governments to hang 
one man for killing one man than to punish killing by wholesale. And 
many poets have felt impelled to express themselves much in the language 
employed by the author of Gray's Elegy who speaks of those who " wade 
through slaughter to a throne, and shut the gates of mercy on mankind." 
I have called attention to these commandments for the purpose of 
emphasizing the fact that if we adopt the doctrine that " might makes 
right " we must be prepared to repudiate all of the moral code upon which 
we rely for the protection of individual life and the guarantee of private 
property. 

The nations that adopt the doctrine that " might makes right," are 
quite sure to act upon the maxim " like cures like," the foundation upon 
which the law of retaliation is built. The logic of the law of retaliation 
is like this: If your enemy is cruel, cure him of his cruelty by being 
more cruel than he ; if your enemy is inhuman, instead of attempting to 
lift him out of his inhiunanity by the power of a good example, be more 
inhuman than he. Nations that enter a war on the theory that " might 
makes right " are soon in a neck and neck race for the bottomless pit, 
each nation justifying its own cruelty and inhumanity by the cruelty 
and inhumanity of its enemy. 

I have purposely applied this false philosophy to those far away be- 
fore applying it at home because I have learned by experienoe that it is 
easier to persuade people to endorse a proposition when applied to others 
than when applied to themselves. But if I may assume that you have 
followed me and that we are now in agreement, I am now prepared to 
apply this false philosophy to a matter with which we are compelled to 
deal whether we desire to do so or not. The issue is upon us and can- 
not be avoided. 

There was a time when some believed that war was a moral tonic — 
when some actually thought that unless people were kept up to fighting 
pitch they would degenerate. That seems absurd to us, for we know that, 
if war were necessary to man's moral development, it would not be left 
to accident or chance. If war were a necessary thing, we would plan for 
it as we plan for other things which we consider necessary. VVe know 
that food is necessary for the body and therefore we provide that the body 
shall receive food at stated intervals, the intervals being adjusted to the 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 53 

body's needs. And so, because we believe the mind in need of education 
we provide for terms of school. If we believed war to be necessary we 
would call in experts and ascertain just how long a man could go Avithout 
killing someone and yet maintain a high standard of civilization, and 
then we would provide for wars at such regular intervals as, in our opinion, 
would insure man's progress, and the time between wars would then be 
like the time between school terms — a time when we could rest and relax 
and get ready for another war. This we would do if we regarded war as 
necessary. But, however war may have been considered by some in the 
past, the world now believes war to be not only unnecessary and unde- 
sirable, but a calamity. 

If there are any who doubt this I am prepared to furnish recently 
secured testimony. When this war began the President offered mediation 
and the rulers of the nations then involved immediately answered and their 
answers were so much alike that one answer might have served for all. 
What did they say? Each ruler said in substance: "I am not guilty; 
I did not desire this war; I am not to blame for this war; some one else 
began it." They all with one accord denied responsibility. The world is 
to be congratulated that we have reached a time when no ruler in a civi- 
lized land dares to admit that he caused this war or even desired it — 
this is a long step in advance. It is not necessary, therefore, to waste 
any time in an effort to prove that war is a curse. That may now be taken 
for granted, and we are at liberty to devote all of our energies to the 
prevention of war. 

But just when it has become possible to unite in an effort to prevent 
war we find a radical difference of opinion as to how war can be prevented. 
A propaganda is being actively carried on which has for its object the 
establishment of the doctrine that the only way to preserve peace is to 
get ready for war. The exponents of this theory admit that war is a hor- 
rible thing and that it should be avoided, but they contend that the only 
way to prevent war is to organize, arm and drill, and then stand, rifle 
in hand and finger on hair-trigger — and preserve the peace. I never ex- 
pected to hear this theory advanced after the present war began. At each 
session of Congress, during the past fifteen or twenty years, we have 
heard some advocating this doctrine and insisting on more battleships 
and a larger army, but their interest could generally be traced to their, 
business connections — they were anxious to furnish the preparedness them- 
selves and therefore advocates of the theory. But when this war broke 
out I thought that at least one good would come out of it, namely, that no 
one would hereafter stand before an intelligent audience and argue that 
preparedness would prevent war. If war could be prevented by prepared- 
ness, there would be no war in Europe today, for they have spent a gen- 
eration getting ready for this war. They had the kindling all ready; all 
they needed was a match. When the war broke out those best prepared 
went in first and others followed as they could prepare, and I believe that, 
if we had been as well prepared as some now ask us to be, we would be 
in the war today shouting for blood as lustily as any of them. 

This is so serious a matter and it is so vitally important that we 
should follow the course best calculated to prevent war that I beg you to 
listen while I present the reasons which lead me to believe that the pre- 
paredness which they now propose would not only not prevent war, but 
would actually provoke war — that with the things that necessarily accom- 
pany it preparedness wduld inevitably lead us into the wars against which 



54 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

they ask us to prepare. In the first place we can not have a period of pre- 
paredness without submitting ourselves to the leadership of those who 
believe in the doctrine that peace rests upon fear; that we can only pre- 
serve the peace by making people afraid of us. This is folly of the ages — 
the very theory that has led Europe into this present conflict. And more, 
if we are driven to preparedness by the scares that are now being worked 
up, we must follow the leadership, not of those who advocate moderate 
preparedness, but of those who insist upon extreme preparedness. If we 
must prepare a little because we are told that one nation may attack us, 
•we must prepare more if another group of jingoes warns us against an 
attack joined in by several nations, and we must go to the very limit if 
a third group pictures an attack in which the world will combine against 
us. There is no limit to the amount of preparation that we shall need if 
we are to provide against every imaginary danger and every possible con- 
tingency. 

The real question which we have to decide is. What shall be our 
standard of honor? Shall it be the European standard — which is the 
duelist's standard — or shall it be a standard in keeping with our aspira- 
tions and achievements? The advocates of extreme preparedness are at- 
tempting to fasten upon this country the duelist's standard of honor and 
we know what that standard is because we had it in this country a hundred 
years ago. When that standard was supported by public sentiment men 
were compelled to fight duels even when they did not believe in the prac- 
tice; they were branded as cowards if they declined. The case of Alexander 
Hamilton is an illustration in point. While I prefer the ideas of Jefferson 
to the ideas of Hamilton, I recognize, as all must, that Hamilton was one 
of the heroic figures of the Revolutionary days. He fought a duel and fell, 
and the last thing he did before he left home for the fatal field was to 
prepare a statement which he left to posterity, saying that he did not 
believe in the practice, but that he felt it necessary to conform to the 
custom in order to be useful in crises which he thought he saw approaching. 
The duelist standard of honor was this: If a man had a wife and she 
needed him, he had no right to think of his wife; if he had children and 
they needed him, he had no right to think of his children; if his country 
needed him, he had no right to think of his covmtry. The only thing he 
could think of was that he must kill somebody or be killed by somebody. 
According to the duelist's standard of honor, it was more honorable for a 
man to throw his wife and children upon the care of a community than to 
allow what he called an insult to go unchallenged. It required moral 
courage on the part of many to effect the change which has been wrought 
on this subject, but the change has come, and we not' only have a law 
against dueling in every State in the Union, but we now call the man a 
coward who sends the challenge, not the man who declines it. 

About fifty years ago a prominent statesman of Georgia received a 
challenge from another statesman of that State. Had the challenge been 
received a century ago instead of a half century the one who received it 
would hardly have dared to decline. But a change was talking place and 
the challenge was declined in an answer that has become a part of history. 
The challenged party said : " No. I have a family to take care of and a 
soul to save and, as you have neither, we would not fight on equal terms. 
Therefore, I will not fight." No nation is challenging us; no nation is 
trying to draw us into war with itself. But if, in a moment of excite- 
ment, one of the madmen of Europe were to challenge us, I think we would 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 55 

be justified in answering in the spirit of the answer of that Georgia states- 
man : " No. We have the welfare of a hundred millions of people to guard 
and priceless ideals to preserve, and we will not get down and wallow with 
you in the mire of human blood, just to conform to a false standard of 
honor." 

Do not allow yourselves to be deceived or misled as to the real issue. 
The question is not whether this nation would defend itself if attacked. 
We have a potential power of defense such as no other nation has today — 
such as no other nation has ever had, and other nations know it. There 
is no danger that an attack would not be resisted, and we would not depend 
upon the jingoes. They would be too busy making army contracts and 
loaning money at high rates of interest to reach the front. If we ever have 
a war, we will depend, as in the past, upon those who work when the 
country needs workers and fight only when the country needs fighters. 

The question, I repeat, is not whether we would be willing or able to 
defend ourselves if attacked. The real question is whether we shall adopt 
the European standard of honor and build our hope of safety upon prepara- 
tions which can not be made without substituting for the peaceful spirit 
of our people the spirit of the militarist and the swagger of the bully. 
The spirit that leads nations to put their faith in physical force is the 
spirit that leads people into war. It is the spirit that expresses itself in 
threats and revels in the ultimatum. 

If you would know what the dangers of preparedness will be if pre- 
paredness becomes a national policy and is administered by those who are 
leading in this crusade, just imagine what the situation would be today 
with so many opportunities to get into trouble, if we had in the White 
House a jingo with the duelist's standard of honor and anxious for a 
fight. We have reason to be grateful that we have as President a man 
who loves peace and is trying to find a peaceful solution of all the problems 
that confront us. 

I ask you next to remember that it is an expensive thing to prepare 
for wars that ought never to come. It cost us $15,000,000 to build the last 
battleship launched, and that was only one-tenth of the amount spent on 
the navy that year. You might think, from the manner in which the 
jingoes belittle our army and navy, that we are at present spending nothing 
on preparedness. But we are, as a matter of fact, spending now two hun- 
dred and fifty millions of dollars annually, getting ready for war. We are 
spending more than one hundred and forty-seven millions on the navy and 
over one hundred million on the army; and how much are we spending 
on agriculture? The Department of Agriculture, which looks after the 
interests of the largest single grovip in this, the largest agricultural country 
in the world — the Department of Agriculture which plants experimental sta- 
tions throughout our land and sends representatives throughout the world 
to gather information for the farmer's benefit — this department receives 
an appropriation of twenty-three millions a year. We are, in other words, 
spending more than ten times as much getting ready for war as we are 
spending on the Department of Agriculture. And yet the jingoes are not 
satisfied. They say that we must now turn over a new leaf ; that we must 
get ready in earn&st. 

There are two organizations in this country which, together claiming 
a monopoly of the patriotism of the nation, have taken upon themselves 
the task of getting the country ready for war. The Security League thinks 
that we should spend three hundred millions a year on the navy and one 



56 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

hundred and fifty millions a year on the army — two hundred millions more 
than we are now spending, or nearly double the present appropriations. 
The Navy l^eague is older, had more ciphers at its disposal and had the 
advantage of making its bid after the other bid had been made. It insists 
that we ought to appropriate five hundred millions for the navy and havt? 
an arm}- of a million men. Its programme could not be carried out for 
seven hundred and fifty millions a year — three times the present appro- 
priation, or an increase of five hundred millions a year. 

To show you what a burden this would cast upon our taxpayers let us 
assume that the appropriations for the army and navy will be kept at 
what they are now — about two hundred and fifty millions a year — and 
inquire what we could do with this proposed increase of five hundred mil- 
lions a year — five billions in ten years — if we spent it for things beneficial. 
I was in California last summer and learned from a commissioner of high- 
ways of the* work they are doing in the building of hard roads. They are 
spending eighteen millions of dollars and their plans contemplate two 
highways running from the Oregon line to the Mexican line — one down 
the Pacific Coast and the other down the great central valleys of the State. 
These two highways are to be connected at the county seats; a splendid 
system. The commissioner told me that it had been found by experiment 
that a farmer can haul four times as much with the same team on a hard 
road as he can haul on a dirt road, and he can haul it any day in the year 
and any hour in the day, and he does not have to consult the weather 
bureau when he hitches his team. They are also building hard roads in 
Oregon. The road between Ashland and Medford has already reduced the 
cost of carrying freight between the two points 50 per cent. The railroads 
charge 16 cents per 100; the auto trucks haul for 8 cents and in addition 
have eliminated drayage charges at both ends of the line. 

They are building hard roads in the State of Washington; the road 
between Seattle and Tacoma is near enough completion to enable auto 
buses to compete successfully with the steam railways and the electric lines. 

I have made a calculation to see how much hard road could be built 
for five billions — the five hundred million increase would aggregate that 
sum in ten years. From information furnished by the Department of Agi'i- 
culture I find that the average cost of a macadam road 16 feet wide and 
6 inches thick is a little over $6,000 a mile. That there may be no 
doubt about the estimate being sufficient let us arbitrarily raise it to 
$8,333.33 1-3 per mile, which will enable us to make the computation in 
round numbers. If we count the distance from ocean to ocean at 3,000 
miles, and the distance from north to south at 1,200 miles, we can with 
five billions of dollars build enough macadam road, three miles for $25,000, 
to make 100 highways from the Atlantic to the Pacific, putting them 
twelve miles apart, and highways north and south twelve miles apart, so 
that when the five billions were spent the country would be gridironed 
with macadam roads twelve miles apart east and west, north and south, 
and no American citizen would then live more than six miles from a hard 
road that would take him anywhere in the United States. 

If the jingoes insist that we are in danger of attack, let us propose 
that we get ready by building roads; it will greatly increase our defensive 
power if we are able to quickly mobilize our army and rapidly transport 
it to the point threatened. And tliere is an advantage about this kind of 
preparedness; if, after we have prepared ourselves, the war does not come, 
we shall be able to make good use of the preparation in the work of pro- 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 57 

duction. If, however, we divert the money from useful channels and spend 
it all on battleships and arms and ammunition, we shall have wasted our 
money if the war does not come; and if it does come, the chances are that 
before it comes changes in methods of warfare will very much reduce the 
value of the preparation in which we have invested. 

But as some may be more interested in having the volume of loanable 
money increased than in having good roads I present another calculation. 
The total capital and surplus of all the banks of the United States — 
national, State and private — aggregate a little less than four billions of 
dollars; with five billions we could duplicate every bank, double the loan- 
able bank capital and surplus of the nation and have a billion dollars left 
with which to celebrate prosperity. 

The taxpayers of the country will not be willing to bear the burdens 
necessary for the proposed preparation unless they are convinced that some 
nation is about to attack us. The jingoes understand this and they are, 
therefore, bearing false witness against other nations. They tell us to 
beware of Japan on the west, and if that does not frighten us they pick 
out some nation in Europe and accuse it of having designs against us; and 
if that does not frighten us they say : " Beware of the fate of Belgium ! " 
How any normal mind can think of Belgium and the United States at the 
same time passes understanding. Belgium has seven millions and a half 
of people, while we have a hundred millions. Would not an ordinary mind, 
working smoothly and without excitement, be able to see the difference 
between seven and a half and a hundred? And there is a still greater 
diflFerence. Belgium is separated from the countries roundabout by an 
imaginary boundary line, while we have the Pacific Ocean on one side 
and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. If any one is able to see the differ- 
ence between an imaginary line and an ocean, let him learn what difficulty 
the nations have had in moving armies across narrow channels and then 
he will understand the protection of the Atlantic Ocean. 

We cannot single out a nation and begin to prepare against it without 
cultivating unfriendliness toward that nation, and we can not make hatred 
a national policy for a generation without having our people anxious to 
fight as soon as they are ready to fight. If the nations at war had spent in 
the cultivation of friendship but a small percentage of the amount they have 
spent in stirring up hatred, there would be no war in Europe today. We 
should not transplant upon American soil this tree of hatred unless we are 
prepared to eat of the fruits of the tree, for it has been bearing its bloody 
fruit throughout the years. 

The third reason which I ask you to consider is this. Tlie prepared- 
ness which we are now asked to make is against nations which are not 
preparing to fight us. But suppose we get ready to fight them; will they 
not prepare against us? If they can scare us when they are not prepared, 
will we not scare them when we do prepare? And then will not their 
preparation compel us to prepare more, and will we not scare them again 
and they us again, and we them again, until bankruptcy overtakes us all? 
This is no new thing. The people who profit by furnishing preparedness 
have been playing the nations of Europe against each other for a genera- 
tion. Every battleship that is built in one country is made the excuse for 
building more battleships in other countries. Let me illustrate the plan 
of the battleship builder. Suppose three farmers lived around a little lake 
and a battleship builder wanted to increase his business — how would he 
go at it? He would go to the first farmer and say: "You are helpless. 



58 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

If your two neighbors were to combine against j'ou, they could overcome 
you; your lack of preparedness is an invitation to them. Let me build 
you a battleship and anchor it here by your land. Then they will see that 
you are prepared and they will be afraid of you and peace will be pre- 
served." He would then go to the second farmer anil say: "Do you see 
that battleship over there? Do you know what that is for? That is for 
you. Are you willing to invite attack by being defenseless? Let me build 
you two battleships and then he will see that you are prepared and will 
be afraid of you and peace will be preserved." He would then go to the 
third farmer and say : " Either one of your neighbors is more than a 
match for you alone; together they can annihilate you. Your only safety 
lies in the building of three battleships. Then when they see you are 
ready they will be afraid of you and the peace of the lake will be pre- 
served." By this time he Avould be able to go back to the first man and 
say: " Your little battleship is out of date. It is a provocation instead 
of a protection. Unless you are willing to build more ships you had better 
sink that one. It shows that you want to fight and everybody knows 
you can not fight. You must have four battleships of the latest pattern 
in order to prevent war by being prepared for it." And so on and so on. 
This is what they have been doing in Europe. Is it possible that they can 
entice us into this mad rivalry? 

If we are urged to depart from the traditions of the past and to enter 
upon a new policy, there are two answers which can be made, either of 
them sufficient. First, if Ave ever intend to change our policy, the change 
must not be made while this war lasts. If we change now, it will be a 
confession that we have been wrong and that Europe has been right, and 
if we make this confession, we shall not only be powerless to assist the 
belligerent countries by a good example, but we shall, by imitation, en- 
courage them in the course which has drawn them into this unprecedented 
conflict. If we are ever to change our policy, now of all times is not the 
time. 

We must consider also our influence on Latin America. If we adopt 
this new policy and turn our energies from the arts of peace to prepara- 
tion for war, will not our neighboring republics be urged to follow our 
example? Can we aff"ord to take the responsibility of retarding their 
progress by encouraging them to divert their money from needed improve- 
ments, to expenditures which are not only unnecessary, but a menace to 
the friendly relations which now exist between them? There is no excuse 
for the present outburst of war spirit — it is not only without excuse, but 
contains infinite possibilities for harm. 

Second, there never has been a time in fifty years when we were in less 
danger than now. No nation has any thought of waging war against us 
and our preparedness is increasing relntively more rapidly than ever be- 
fore. If the warring nations keep on killing each other as they are killing 
each other now, burning up property as they are burning it up now, and 
mortgaging the future as they are mortgaging it now, they Avill not have 
left enough able-bodied men, enough money or enough credit to threaten a 
nation like this. No, there is no excuse for the attempt which is now 
being made to lash the country into a fright over possible wars. Let us 
do what we can to stop the war in Europe; humanity, as well as our own 
security, demands it. But if we can not stop the war there — if the dogs 
of war must fight — we should at least keep hydrophobia out of this country 
while the war lasts. 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 59 

And now let us consider the way out or the road to permanent peace. 
And before taking up the real way out let us for a moment look at some of 
the ways that do not lead out. Some talk of annihilation and argue that 
the war must go on until one side completely effaces the other. Annihila- 
tion is a big word and tlie annihilation of a nation a very difficult task. 
Long before they are in sight of annihilation they will be so sick of blood- 
shed that they will stop. There are already signs of sickness now. They 
have been striking in the coal mines on one side and in the gun factories 
on the other. On one side they have been protesting against threatened 
conscription and on the other against the doctrine of conquest. No, they 
will not carry the war to the point of annihilation, and if they did it 
would be a crime against civilization. If they do not know each other, we 
know them all, for their children have come among us and have helped to 
make this country what it is. We know that these belligerent nations 
have reached their present positions through struggles that have lasted 
for centuries and that each one has a priceless contribution to make to 
the future of the world. God might have made all the flowers of one color 
and with a single fragrance, but the world would not have been as attrac- 
tive had He done so. And so God might have made all the nations with 
one history and a single language, but I believe that the world is better 
for their rivalries and their competitions; they together constitute one 
resplendent political bouquet. 

Some think that if the war does not go on until annihilation takes place 
it must at least go on until one side is so completely triumphant that it 
can dictate the terms of peace, compel the acceptance of those terms, and 
thereafter maintain the peace of Europe by the sword. Bvit when we con- 
sider the immense masses of men on either side this thought is almost as 
idle as the thought of annihilation, and it will not brighten the future if 
as result of this war one nation or group of nations emerges from the 
conflict master on land or sea. 

If there is one lesson which history teaches more clearly than any 
other it is that nations which aspire to mere physical supremacy have no 
hope of immortality; the fact that they put their faith in force is proof 
that they have in them the seeds of death. The pathway of human progress 
is lined with the wrecks of empires which, when at the zenith of their power, 
thought themselves invincible. 

What the world needs is not a despot to fix the terms upon which the 
rest shall live; its great need is that these nations shall be brought to- 
gether in a spirit of friendship and fellowship that they may co-operate in 
working out the destiny of Europe. If this nation has any influence, that 
influence must be exerted to bring the warring nations together and not 
to encourage them in the false hope that a permanent peace can be built 
on force or fear. 

All of the rulers of the nations at war tell us that they did not want 
the war and did not cause it, but none of them tell us how it can be 
brought to an end. Have not these neutral nations, all of whom bear 
burdens, though they are not to blame, a right to know what it is that, 
being done, peace may be restored? For what are the nations fighting — 
not in general terms but specifically? Is it territory that they want, then 
how much and where is it located? Is it blood that they demand, then how 
much more blood must be shed to avenge the blood already shed? If they 
will not answer the neutral nations, will they not make answer to their 
own people? The day will come when this accumulated sorrow will over- 



60 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

flow — ^when this pent-up anguish will find a voice — and then, if not before, 
the rulers must answer that stern question which shakes thrones and fixes 
the farthermost limits of arbitrary power: " Wliy. do we die?" 

Europe has had machinery for war, but not for peace. The nations 
of Europe could go to war in a minute, but they were not sufliciently sup- 
plied witli machinery for the adjustment of difficulties that defied diplo- 
matic settlement. And we can not be harsh in our criticism because, until 
recently, this nation was almost as poorly supplied as the European nations 
with the machinery for the preservation of peace. Until within three years 
our best treaties were those known as the " Arbitration Treaties " and 
they had two serious defects. First, they only ran five years and then 
died. And when one of these treaties died it had to be renewed by the eame 
formalities required for its negotiation. It had to be ratified by two-thirds 
of the Senate, which meant that though the President might desire to 
continue it and though a majority of the Senate might desire to continue 
it, the extension of its life could be prevented if a minority of the Senate, 
more than one-third, objected. But a still more serious defect was found 
in the fact that these treaties did not cover all questions — they excepted 
questions of honor, questions of independence, vital interests and interests 
of third parties, the very questions out of which wars are apt to grow. 
When a man is angry every question is a question of honor, every interest 
a vital interest. Man angry is a very diflferent animal from man calm; 
when a man is angry he swaggers about and talks about what he can do, 
and he generally overestimates it. When he is calm he thinks about what 
he ought to do and listens to the voice of conscience. 

We now have thirty treaties with nations representing three-fourths 
of the world and these treaties cure the defects of which I have spoken. 
In the first place, instead of dying at the end of five years they never die. 
They run on and on until twelve months after one side or the other has 
asked that they be discontinued. I believe that neither side will ever ask 
that these treaties be discontinued. I have such faith in these treaties that 
I believe that a thousand years from now the name of Woodrow Wilson 
and my name will be linked together in the capitals of the world and that 
these treaties will preserve the peace of our nation by furnishing machinery 
by which peace can be preserved with honor. 

But what is more important than length of life, these treaties contain 
no exceptions ; they cover all disputes of every kind and character. Each 
one of these thirty treaties provides that every dispute that defies diplo- 
matic settlement, if not by some other treaty submitted for final settle- 
ment, must be submitted to an international commission for investigation 
and report. Each one of these thirty treaties also provides that the period 
of investigation may last a year, and each one of ihese treaties further 
provides that during the period of investigation neither side shall declare 
war or begin hostilities. Here are three provisions, new to treaty-making, 
which reduce war between us and the contracting parties to a remote 
possibility. 

We do not contend that war is made impossible — I only wish it were 
possible to make war impossible. But in order to secure the investigation 
of all questions it was necessary to reserve to each nation the right of in- 
dependent action at the conclusion of the investigation. If any one be- 
lieves that war may sometimes be necessary, let him find consolation in the 
fact that every one of these treaties specifically reserves the right of our 
nation to go to war. If any desire war, all they have to do is to stir 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 61 

the people up to fever heat and keep them there for a year; then if no 
other way out is found, the nation is at liberty to fight its way out. And 
I so much believe in the right of the people to have what they want that 
I admit the right of people to go to war if they really want it. But I 
feel as a North Carolina Congressman expressed himself, tliat if we are to 
have war it would be better for the people to vote it upon themselves than 
to have others vote it on them. If there is any question upon which there 
should be a referendum vote, it is the question of peace or war which may 
mean life or death to so many people. And if we have a referendum vote 
on war, it will only be fair that the women shall vote as well as the men, 
for women bear the larger portion of the burden in time of war. I believe 
that the women should vote on all questions, but if they vote on only one, 
it ought to be at an election which decides the issue between peace and war. 
And I agree with the North Carolina Congressman on another matter. 
He suggests that it would insure deliberation on the part of the voters if 
the vote was taken with the understanding that those who voted for war 
would enlist first; and that those who voted against war should constitute 
a great reserve army which would not be called into service until after 
all those who voted for war had had a chance to show what they could do. 
I like the idea and I venture to add another suggestion. I am a journalist, 
among other things; whenever any one asks me what I am, my answer is, 
a journalist. I am proud of the profession, though not of all the members 
of it. If we have war, I shall insist in the name of the journalists of the 
country that the first battle line shall be made up of jingo editors that 
they may have the glory of dying before any one else is hurt. 

These thirty treaties will, in my judgment, go far toward preserving 
peace and I believe that the principle ought to be applied to all nations: 
If the plan is good enough to offer to all nations — and the offer has never 
been withdrawn; if the plan is good enough to be entered into with nations 
representing one billion three hundred millions of people; if the plan is 
good enough to be endorsed in principle by Germany, Austria and Belgium, 
countries with which treaties of this kind have not yet been negotiated — 
it is good enough to be used with any country before we go to war with 
that country. 

But I will go a step further; even if we use the treaty plan and it 
fails to secure a settlement — or if we fail to use it and reach a point where 
we must decide, either to go into this war or to postpone final settlement 
of the dispute until this war is over — if we must choose between these two 
alternatives, I believe it would be the part of wisdom to postpone final 
settlement until the war is over. First, because postponement would make 
war unnecessary, and that would be a sufficient reason for postponing it. 
We wovild have no difficulty in settling any dispute which we now have 
or which may arise during the war but for the fear of the effect of the 
settlement upon the war itself. 

But even if a postponement did not prevent war, it would be better' 
to have our war after this war is over than during this war, because it 
would then be our own war with the country with which we had our 
dispute and we could not only go into the war at pleasure, but come out at 
will. But this war is not our war — it is everybody's war — and if we go 
into it, we can not come out without consulting others, and others would 
determine also what we would fight for while we were in — and God forbid 
that we shall ever tie ourselves to the quarrels, rivalries and ambitions of 
the nations of Europe. 



63 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

And now bear Avith me for a moment while I present three reasons why 
it is imperatively necessary that we shall not enter this war. I shall not 
present tliese reasons in the order of their importance, rather in inverse 
order. First, no one can tell what it v/ould cost us in dollars to enter 
this war. It is not like any other war and therefore estimates based upon 
the past would be of little value. Let those who glibly talk of war give 
us a guess as to what it would cost to take part in this war and then give 
a warranty that their guess is high enough. Many predictions have been 
made in regard to this war, but so far none have been verified. Would it 
cost one billion? One of the jingo papers insisted a few weeks ago that 
Congress should be called together immediately to vote a credit of one 
billion dollars in anticipation of a possible war. It would be more likely 
to cost five billions or ten, but even if it cost ten billions that would not 
be the greltcst objection to war. There are two other objections that are 
more important. 

Tlie second objection is based upon the possible loss of life. How many 
men would it cost us to take part in this war? A hundred thousand? 
They have already killed over two millions; one hundred thousand would 
hardly be enough for our quota in such a war. If we go into this war we 
can not go in in a stingy way or as a miserly nation. If it is manly 
to go in, it will be manly to play a man's part and be prodigal in blood 
and money. 

The danger of war with Germany now seems to be passed and the 
covmtry is relieved to have the American position in the submarine con- 
troversy accepted. But while there was a possibility of war — while the 
question was acute — some of our American papers were insisting that we 
ought to go to war with Germany at any cost. I do not believe that our 
people would be willing to send one hundred thousand brave Americans to 
death because a little more than a hundred took ships that they ought not 
to have taken into danger zones about which they fully understood. It 
is not that our people did not have a right to take those ships. Under 
international law they did have a right to sail on those ships, but great 
international questions can not be settled on naked legal rights. There are 
duties as well as rights. Let me illustrate. Every young man, when he 
becomes of age, has a legal right to leave his home and make a career for 
himself. He is not compelled to consider either the wishes or the needs of 
his parents. But, fortunately, most of our young men put their duty to 
their parents above their legal rights and inquire about the welfare of the 
old folks before they leave home. 

And so every American citizen has duties as well as rights. Do you 
say that it is the duty of this government to take its army and follow 
an American citizen around the world and protect his rights? That is only 
one side of the proposition. The obligations of citizenship are reciprocal. 
It is the duty of the citizen to consider his country's safety and the welfare 
of his fellowmen. In time of war the government can take the son from 
his widowed mother and compel him to give his life to help his country 
out of war. If, in time of war, the government can compel its citizens- to 
die in order to bring the war to an end, the government can, in time of 
peace, say to its citizens that they shall not, by taking unnecessary risks, 
drag their country into war and compel this sacrifics of their countrymen. 

In time of riot a mayor has authority to keep the people of his town 
off of the streets until order is restored. Has not the government of a nation 
like ours as much authority as the mayor of a city? When the world is 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 63 

in riot our government has, I believe, a right to say to its citizens: " You 
shall not embarrass the government in dealing with this question. You 
shall not add to your nation's perils. You must keep out of the danger 
zone until your government restores order and compels respect for the rights 
of American citizens." But suppose it cost us not one hundred thousand 
men but half a million or a million. That is not the greatest objection to 
the war. 

Great as is the first objection, based on the possible cost in money, 
and greater still as is the second objection, based upon the possible cost in 
blood, there is a still greater objection; viz., that we can not become a 
belligerent and at the same time remain neutral. 

We stand at the head of the neutral nations; the world looks to us to 
act as mediator when the time for mediation comes. If, for any reason, 
no matter what that reason may be, we enter this war, we must step down 
fronTour high position and turn over to some other nation an opportunity 
such as never came to any nation before and may never come again! 

Then, too, we are the next of kin to all the nations now at war; they 
are blood of our blood and bone of our bone. Not a soldier boy falls on 
any battlefield over yonder but the wail of sorrow in his home finds an 
echo at some American fireside, and these nations have a right to expect 
that we will remain the friend of all, and be in position to play the part 
of a friend when a friend can aid. 

Some nation must lift the world out of the black night of war into 
the light of that day when an enduring peace can be built on love and 
brotherhood, and I crave that honor for this nation. More glorious than 
any page of history that has yet been written will be the page that records 
our claim to the promise made to the peacemakers. 

This is the day for which the ages have been waiting. For nineteen 
hundred years the gospel of the Prince of Peace has been making its 
majestic march around the world, and during these centuries the philosophy 
of the Sermon on the Mount has become more and more the rule of daily 
life. It only remains to lift that code of morals from the level of the 
individual and make it real in the law of nations, and ours is the nation 
best prepared to set the example. We are less hampered by precedent than 
other nations and therefore more free to act. I appreciate the value of 
precedent — what higher tribute can I pay it than to say that it is as uni- 
versal as the law of gravitation and as necessary to stability? And yet 
the law of gravitation controls only inanimate nature — everything that 
lives is in constant combat with the law of gravitation. The tiniest insect 
that creeps upon the ground wins a victory over it every time it moves; 
even the slender blade of grass sings a song of triumph over this universal 
law as it lifts itself up toward the sun. So every step in human progress 
breaks the law of precedent. Precedent lives in the past — it relies on 
memory, because a thing never was, precedent declares that it can never 
be. Progress walks by faith and dares to try the things that ought to be. 
This, too, in the leading Christian nation. We give more money every 
year to carry the gospel to those who live under other flags than any other 
nation now living or that has lived. The two reasons combine to fix the 
eyes of the world upon us as the one nation which is at liberty to lead the 
way from the blood-stained methods of the past out into the larger and 
better day. 

We must not disappoint the hopes which our ideals and achievements 
have excited. If I know the heart of the American people they are not 



64 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

willing that this supreme opportunity shall pass by unimproved. No, the 
metropolitan press is not the voice of the nation ; you can no more measure 
the sentiment of the peace-loving masses by the froth of the jingo press 
than you can measure the ocean's depths by the foam upon its waves. 



THE NATION'S PREPAREDNESS 

BT 

Hon. CLAUDE KITCHIN 

(House Leader) 

Statement given to Press of North Carolina, November 20, 1915. 

Mr. Editor: 

The Seven Seas Magazine, the organ of the Navy League (the organiza- 
tion which has created, by deception and misrepresentation, the apparently 
big sentiment for the militarism and navalism now proposed, and which 
seems to have stampeded many patriotic and usually level-headed people), 
declared in its October issue that I had the right " to vote for or against " 
the preiJaredness measure, but that I had " neither the right nor should he 
(I) be allowed even to discuss it in the House," etc. I trust, however, 
that the press of my State, though most of it differ widely with me, will 
not refuse the privilege which I ask, to express through it to the people 
some of the reasons for my position and give some of the facts with respect 
to the question which has been withheld from, or certainly not given to 
the public. I ask this privilege, with confidence that it will be granted, 
especially in view of the fact that many of the State papers have severely 
criticized me, some going to the extent of bitterly denouncing me. I have 
no criticism to make of the press and the people in the State who differ 
with me. Having heard only one side, and owing to the tons of literature 
of deception and misrepresentation on the subject being poured out daily 
to the people by the metropolitan press and magazines — many, perhaps, 
innocentlj' — and" by the so-called " Patriotic Societies," of which the Navy 
League is the head, it is but natural that a large majority of the people 
should oppose my position. With your permission, I shall now proceed to 
give some of the facts and reasons which impel me to- oppose the big mili- 
tary and naval programme which will be proposed to Congress. 

1. AS TO THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF OUR NAVY. 

All the talk and writings by the press and the so-called " Patriotic 
Societies " about our " utter helplessness," our " dangerous unprepared- 
ness," our " defenseless condition," our " growing weakness," our " having 
fallen to the third or fourth grade of inferiority in naval strength," etc., 
is pure tommy-rot, based not on a single fact. 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 65 

Let it be first understood that in the " Preparedness " programme the 
Navy of Great Britain is eliminated. This was so testified by the Secretary 
of the Navy, Admiral Fletcher, and other naval experts, and even by Hob- 
son, in the hearings before the Naval Committee at the last session of 
Congress, all declaring that we do not need or desire a navy as strong as 
hers. Notwithstanding the metropolitan press, magazine writers and the 
"Patriotic Societies" and our Navy Year-Brook (which was exposed in 
the last Congress, and will be so exposed in the next, as unreliable and 
misleading), the fact is, that we have built and building the strongest and 
most poicerful navy in the world, except that of Great Britain (which is 
eliminated as above stated). Our navy is stronger than that of Germany, 
far superior to that of France, more than twice as strong as that of Japan 
or of any of the other nations. Admiral Fletcher, the highest active officer 
in the navy, commander of the Atlantic Fleet, the man who will have to 
do the fighting if any is to be done (whose judgment on naval subjects the 
Secretary of the Navy,, before the Naval Committee, declared he had sooner 
take than that of any man in the world ) , expressly declared, at the naval 
hearings during the last session of Congress, that we had a navy, " superior 
to that of Germany or any other nation, except Great Britain." In answer 
to the question, " If in a war with Germany, could our navy successfully 
resist that of Germany?" he answered, "Yes." Captain Winterhalter, 
another naval expert, testified: "Judge Witherspoon has proved that our 
navy is superior to that of Germany and I agree with him." Admiral 
Badger, ex-Commander of the Atlantic Fleet (a member of the General 
Board of the Navy), declared that no one had ever heard him say that 
" Germany had a superior navy to ours." 

The facts of record, the tests laid dovm by naval experts here and 
abroad, and the naval authorities of the world (all of which I have before 
me as I write) confirm the truth of this testimony. 

The armored fleet of Germany, consisting of battleships, dreadnaughts 
and predreadnaughts, armored cruisers and battle cruisers (built and 
building) in number is fifty-two (to say nothing of the vessels lost since 
January 1, 1915). The fleet of the United States, of the same vessels, is 
in number fifty-six, with over 40,000 more tonnage. (Number and tonnage, 
however, are not the criterion of superiority.) Of twenty of Germany's 
battleships listed by our Navy Year-Brook, sixteen are not able to go more 
than 1000 miles from base to engage in naval warfare. Not one of the 
sixteen carries coal enough to go from Hamburg or Bremen to within five 
hundred miles of New York and return (to say nothing about being em- 
ployed in a naval engagement). The Oregon, which some of our naval 
experts say is obsolete, and not listed by our Navy Year-Book (the Indiana 
and Massachusetts not listed also), in every characteristic of a fighting 
ship (bigger guns, heavier armor, stronger ship) is far superior to any 
one of the twenty German battleships listed by our Year-Book. Four of 
the German ships listed by our Year-Book as dreadnaughts are in reality 
not dreadnaughts, and are shown by one of the highest naval authorities 
in the world (Jane's Fighting Ships) to be defective, unsuccessful ships, 
and so known to be by every student of naval affairs. The last five dread- 
naughts authorized by Congress are superior to any six dreadnaughts 
Germany has, built or building. Our ships are better, larger, stronger 
and more heavily armored. Our guns are larger, stronger and more effec- 
tive. Of the big guns of the ships, twelve inches and over, we have 284, 
while Germany has only 194 (built and building). 



66 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

If the navy of Great Britain is to be eliminated in the " Prepared- 
ness " programme, which our naval experts say it should be, and if we 
have a navy now superior to that of Germany or nny other nation in the 
world, except Great Britain, for whom or against whom do we propose 
to prepare by the fabulous increase of our naval appropriations which the 
proposed programme requires? 

V/e are prepared. 

Instead of " our na\y growing weaker," as the metropolitan press, the 
" Patriotic Societies " and the jingoes and war traffickers would have the 
people believe, it is groiving higger, stronger, more efficient and better- 
equipped every year. In the two years of Wilson's administration the 
naval building programme authorized is twice as large and costly as the 
last tioo years of Taft's administration and larger and more costly by 
$8,000,00d tlian the entire four years of Roosevelt's last term, and prac- 
tically as large and costly as the entire four years of Taft's administra- 
tion. There is today over 50 per cent more construction going on for our 
navy than on the Ist day of March, 1913, or at any other time in the 
history of our country. We have nearly 100 per cent more torpedoes, 
mines, mine layers, powder and other munitions than we had on the 1st 
day of March, 1913, and steadily increasing them. We have under Mr. 
Wilson's and Mr. Daniel's administration, for the first time in years, the 
full compleme^it of enlisted men authorized by law. 

We are preparing. 

In view of the foregoing facts, was not President Wilson right when 
he said in his message to Congress, December, 1914, in opposing the pro- 
gramme of the Hobsons and Gardners : " Let there be no misconception. 
The coxmtry has been misinformed. TTe have not been negligent of national 
defense." 

2. AS TO THE ENORMITY OF THE PROPOSED PROGRAMME— 
WHAT IT IS: 
The heretofore large and growing expenditures for our Navy had aroused 
the people of the country into asking, " Where shall it end ? " Secretary 
Daniels, in his report to the last session of Congress, December, 1914, said 
(and he was but substantially repeating what had been said in the British 
Parliament, the German Reichstag, the French Assembly, and by promi- 
nent statesmen the world over relative to the armament expenditures of 
their respective countries for the last several years) : "The naval appro- 
priations in our own country have doubled in a dozen years and have gone 
up by leaps and bounds in other countries. If this mad rivalry in con- 
struction goes on the burden ivill become too heavy for any nation to bear." 
In his report of December, 1913, he says: "The growing cost of dread- 
naughts, of powder and of everything that makes an efficient na\'y gives 
reason to pause. The heavy expense commands national and international 
consideration. Ten years ago our largest battleships cost $5,288,000. The 
next dreadnaught wiU cost $14,044,000." (The dreadnaughts hereafter 
to be authorized will cost from $18,000,000 to $20,000,000, and in an 
interview the Secretary says all ship materials and munitions of war have 
gone up over 30 per ^ent. ) He asks, "When is this accelerating expendi- 
ture to be reduced? . . If it is not hastened by appeals for the peaceful 
settlement of national differences, the day is not far distant when the 
growirg burdens of taxation for excessive war and naval expenditures icill 
call 1 halt." 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 67 

Now, in the face of the deplorable truth recited by the Secretary; in 
the face of the fact that we have a Navy superior to that of Germany or 
any other nation, except that of Great Britain; in the face of the fact that 
our navy is growing larger, stronger and better equipped than ever before; 
in the face of the fact, as the President declared both in his message to 
Congress December last and in his recent Manhattan Club speech, " We 
are threatened from no quarter," the proposed " Preparedness " programme 
at one bound — one year — increases our already immensely large naval ap- 
propriations more than our total increase for the last fourteen years ; more 
than the increase by Germany the whole fifteen years preceding the Euro- 
pean war, and more than the combined increase of all the nations in the 
world in any one year in their history (in times of peace) ! 

The five-year programme increases our naval appropriation over forty 
times more than the increase by Germany in five years preceding the 
European war ; and $200,000,000 more than the combined increase of all 
tJie nations in the world for the five years preceding the European war; 
and over $50,000,000 more than the combined increase of all the nations 
in the world for the whole period of ten years\ immediately preceding the 
European war!! 

Add to this the fact that prior to the beginning of the European war 
we were expending annually on our navy from $20,000,000 to $30,000,000 
more than Germany or any other nation (except Great Britain) was ex- 
pending on its navy. 

For the ten years preceding the European war we had expended on 
our Navy over $300,000,000 more than Germany or any other nation {ex- 
cept Great Britain) had expended on its navy! And yet the metropolitan 
press, the magazine writers, the " Patriotic Societies " and the jingoes 
and war traffickers would frighten the country into the belief that we 
have a little, puny, eggshell of a navy! 

The five-year naval programme calls for an increase of $500,000,000 — 
$100,000,000 increase a year — which, including the inevitable incidental 
expenses for expanding the whole naval establishment in order to accom- 
modate the programme, will reach $600,000,000 or over by the time the 
five years expire!! This is all extra — in addition to the-large appropria- 
tions we have been annually making. 

The army four-year programme demands $450,000,000 increase, over 
$100,000,000 a year extra, being an increase of more than 100 per cent. 
over our annual Army appropriations! All extra appropriation, be it re- 
membered. Extra taxes must be paid by the people, be it remembered! 

Before leaving the subject of the enormity of the proposed programme, 
I desire to make a further observation: 

At the expiration of the five-year period for the programme this country 
will then be expending on its Navy and Army more than any nation in 
the icorld in times of peace ever expended on its Army and Navy; more 
than England, with her navalism, more than Russia or Germany, with 
their huge militarism. At the beginning of the European war Germany 
was expending for past wars and preparations for wars (on its army and 
Navy) 55 per cent, of the total amount of revenues collected, Japan 45 
per cent.. Great Britain 37 per cent., France 35 per cent., the United States 
over 60 per cent. With the proposed military and naval programme en- 
acted into law the United States icill be expending over 70 per cent, of 
its total revenues — that is, out of every $100.00 collected from the people 
over $70.00 will go into militarism and navalism, including pensions, leav- 



68 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

ing less than $30.00 for all other functions of our government and for all 
other benefits of the people. 

3. AS TO THE CONDITION OF, OUR TREASURY AND ITS REVE- 

NUES AND EXTRA TAXATION REQUIRED. 

The condition of our treasury and our revenue and the necessities 
of the government are less able now to permit increased appropriations 
than ever before. The treasury has felt most heavily the burden of the 
present war. Our general surplus fund of over $150,000,000 is monthly 
disappearing; our deficits are annual and monthly; our revenues have 
diminished; we have strained the nerves of the government to get sufficient 
revenue to meet its ordinary expenses; we have been forced to levy an 
emergency tax; our deficits still exist; our revenues still insufficient. 
After the expiration of the present emergency tax December 31, 1915, we 
will be faced with deficits for the coming year of at least $117,000,000. 
This is upon the assumption that not a dollar of increased appropriation 
■will be made for any purpose over the last year's appropriation (yet I 
understand that there will be from $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 increase 
asked other than the Army and Navy increase). This $117,000,000 deficit 
is upon the further assumption that Congress will repeal the sugar free 
list provision of the Underwood Act, which goes into effect May 1st, 1915 
(which itself will impose $100,000,000 burden upon the people). For this 
programme of militarism and navalism — euphoniously called by its advocates 
" national defense " or " preparedness " programme — $200,000,000 annual 
increase of taxation is required. This, added to the deficit above men- 
tioned, makes $317,000,000 additional annual taxation (even with the free 
sugar clause repealed), which must be raised, on the assumption, too, there 
will not be a dollar increase in any other appropriation over that of last 
year. This is three times larger annual increase than loas ever required 
or raised (and practically all of it must be raised by direct or excise taxes) 
than at any time in the history of our government; except during the 
Civil War. No man in the Administration or in the Ways and Means 
Committee, although for months they have wearied their wits over it, has 
yet been able to solve even the beginning of the problem of raising this 
enormous increase of revenue. I have had hundreds of suggestions as to 
how to raise it. All the suggestions combined would not begin to raise 
the amount. Every suggestion has been, however, to raise the tax on the 
other fellow and on the other fellow's business or product and not on his. 
When the Ways and Means Committee begins to attempt to frame measures 
for raising the revenue and especially when the people begin to pay the 
taxes for this enormous increase, they will then, perhaps, realize what the 
programme means. I have had experience enough with taxation to know 
that those who are howling most loudly now for the big Army and Navy 
programme will protest and howl most wildly against any measure which 
may be attempted or proposed for increase of taxes. 

4. THE BIG, OVERREACHING OBJECTION TO THE PROGRAMME. 

The huge burden, heretofore unheard of or undreamed of, which this 
fabulous increase of appropriations for the Army and Navy will place upon 
the taxpayers can, and will have to be borne, in spite of their murmurs 
and protests, which will surely come in the future. ITiis of itself to me 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 69 

is a cruel wrong, especially under the conditions and situation of our coun- 
try and our Navy, as I have above outlined. 

But the big, overreaching objection to this stupendous programme is 
that this sudden, radical and revolutionary move for big war preparation 
on our part is going to shock the civilized world, and whatever be the out- 
come of the present war, will alarm the world again into an armed camp. 
It will postpone for generations the day of universal peace for which all 
Christendom has been praying. It will deprive this government, through 
its President, of the greatest opportunity to serve mankind that ever came 
to nation or to man, in the final negotiation of peace terms among the 
belligerents, to lay the basis of perpetual international peace. 

The militarists and war traffickers of every nation in the world will 
point to our conduct as an example and a cause why big war preparations 
and big armaments should be renewed on a larger scale than ever before, 
and its consummation will only be limited by the ability of the nations 
appealed to. If we take this step every nation will suspect — in fact, every 
nation will feel convinced, and no argument of our government can dissi- 
pate such conviction — that our coimtry in this tremendous step has other 
designs than mere self-defense. Every nation will absolutely know that 
no such step or measure is necessary. The world will be convinced, in spite 
of our protestations, that we are preparing, as the Seven Seas Magazine, 
the organ of the Navy League, advocated in its last issue (November) 
for wars of conquest. This organ of this so-called patriotic society in its 
same issue boldly broadcasts throughout our country the savage, barbarous 
sentiment which I quote: "There should be no doubt that even with all 
possible moral refinements it is the absolute right of a nation to live to 
its fullest intensity, to expand, to found colonies, to get richer and richer 
by any proper means, such as armed conquest. Such expansion as an aim 
is an inalietiable right and in the case of the United States it is a par- 
ticular duty." This organ of the Navy League, the organization, as I said 
before, which has, by organized effort, created the sentiment of our people 
for a big militarism and navalism, is but giving the people of this country 
and of the world an earnest of what we are to expect when this programme 
is enacted into law. 

The world, even among the belligerents of the present war, is already 
looking with grave suspicion and alarm upon this colossal step. Since 
writing the above, in confirmation of it, the morning papers bring to us 
the speech of Lord Rosebery, made at the London University on the night 
of November the 16th, from which I quote: "I know nothing more dis- 
heartening than the announcement recently made that the United States — 
the one great country left in the world free from the hideous, bloody burden 
of war — is about to embark upon the building of a huge armada. It means 
that the burden will continue upon the other nations, and be increased exactly 
in proportion to the fleet of the United States. I confess that it is a dis- 
heartening prospect that the United States, so remote from European con- 
flict, should voluntarily in these days take up the burden, which, after 
this war, will be found to have broken, or almost broken, our backs." 

5. AS TO THE FEARS OF OUR PEOPLE. 

In the hope of allaying to some extent the alarmed state of mind and 
the fears of our people, provoked by the European war, and aggravated and 
intensified by the organized efforts of the so-called " Patriotic Societies " 



70 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

and the war traffickers, I desire to make a few observations. With the 
experience of the present war, which we are daily observing, even if our 
fleet were not half as big as it is (and I have shown that it is superior 
to that of any other nation in the world, except that of Great Britain), 
it would be impossible, notwithstanding the jingoes and the war traffickers 
and the press, for Germany or any other country to ever bombard or land 
a soldier on our coast, provided we were equipped with mines and sub- 
marines. With these we are most rapidly equipping ourselves. England 
has a navy two and one-half times as strong as that of Germany. England 
and France have a fleet more than three times as strong as that of Ger- 
many. Take a map and you will see that the German seacoast on the 
North Sea is practically at the head of the English Channel, within less 
than 30O ,miles of London, and has several miles of seacoast along the 
Baltic. The bulk of the English and French fleet is now, and has been, 
within less than a day's run of the German coast. If England could 
bombard or land on the coast of Germany, on the North Sea or on the 
Baltic Sea, the war would end in sixty days. Germany would have to 
withdraw from France to protect her own soil. Why does not the fleet of 
the Allies, nearly four times as strong, go in and destroy the little fleet of 
Germany, bombard her seacoast at once, land an army, etc. ? Certainly not 
because of a little German fleet already bottled up, one-fourth as large, 
but because of mines and submarines. Now, look at the map again and 
see how the Russian coast and the German coast compare and how they 
adjoin along the Baltic Sea ; Germany has control of the Baltic, even against 
the fleet of the Allies. Germany has a fleet four times as large as that of 
Russia. W^hat keeps Germany away from the Russian coast? Why doesn't 
Germany, with a fleet four times as strong, destroy the Russian fleet, bom- 
bard her seaport towns and land an army? If she could do this, the war 
would end in sixty days. 

Russia would be forced to a separate peace 4n spite of her agreement 
with the Allies. Certainly it is not the little one-fourth size fleet she has, 
but because of mines and submarines. If Germany, with her fleet not one- 
third as strong as that of the Allies, does not fear the bombardment of her 
coast or the landing of an army by the Allies, when within less than 200 
miles, and if Russia, with her little fleet one-fourth as large as that of 
Germany, is not afraid of Germany bombarding her coast and landing an 
army on her shores, why in the name of common sense should any man, 
woman or child in the United States fear that Germany or any other nation 
can ever get within gun reach of our shores or land an army on our coast, 
when they are over 3,000 miles away, provided we are equipped with mines 
and submarines? Add one thing further, that, in spite of the press, the 
" Patriotic Societies " and the jingoes and war traffickers, our coast defenses 
are superior to that of any nation in the world. President Taft, in his 
speech in Chicago, November 10th, before the National Security League, 
said : " American coast defenses are as good as any in the world." At 
the hearings in the last session of Congress (this year) General Erasmus 
M. Weaver, Chief of Coast Artillery, whose duty it is, he said, to " be 
advised as to the character and sufficiency of our seacoast armament," 
stated: "My information is that our system of fortification is reasonably 
adequate for all defensive purposes, which they are likely to be called upon 
to meet"; and further said, "/ have been a close student of the whole 
subject naturally for a number of years and / knoio of no fortifications in 
the world, as far as my reading, observation and knoicledge goes, that 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE Tl 

compare favorably in efficiency vnth ours." General Crozier, Chief of Ord- 
nance, considered one of the greatest experts in the country on fortifications 
and guns, at the hearings, considering the alterations then asked for and 
now being made, said, " In ray opinion these guns with the other advantages 
which our land defense fortifications have, icill be adequate for maintaining 
a successful combat xoith vessels of loar armed with any gun which is now 
under construction anywhere in the world to my knowledge." 

6. AS TO THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE PRESIDENT AND 
MYSELF. 

We thoroughly understand each other. I know that he is convinced 
deeply and sincerely that his programme is right. He knows that I am 
thorouglily convinced that it is wrong. He knows, too, that my convictions 
on the subject are deep and sincere and that I have given the subject 
mature study and thought and have reasons for my position. I had a 
most cordial' and pleasant interview with him for an hour and a half on 
November the 8th. On this question we simply agreed to disagree, both 
expressing regrets (and, I am sure, sincere regrets) that I could not sup- 
port the programme. My inability to agree with him and my opposition 
to his programme do not interfere with the pleasant, cordial relations that 
exist between us. As he said in his Manhattan speech, and assured me, 
as well as others, this question is not a party question but one for the 
thought and conviction of each individual. The President knows, too, that 
in ail matters before my Committee, and especially in raising sufficient 
revenue to finance all appropriations and in every effort he shall make to 
redeem the pledges our party made to the people, he shall have my hearty 
and earnest co-operation. 

I fear that neither the President nor the Secretary of the Navy, with 
their other manifold duties, have possibly had the time to give the de- 
tailed study and thought to the subject which many of us have. I recall 
that the President in his letter of July 21st to the Secretary of the Na\'y 
(which, by the way, I had not seen until some time after my letter in 
September to the New York World), asked for advice of naval experts, 
saying: " I want their advice, a programme by them formulated in the 
most definite terms." I cannot help believing that the military and naval 
experts have badly advised and misinformed both the President and the 
Secretary of the Navy. Naval officers or experts are not competent judges 
of the policy which this country should pursue. Their very training of 
thought and their ambition are to see only one function of the govern- 
ment — that of the Navy. They know what will gratify their ambition. 
They know what they want. From the time a man enters Annapolis, as 
long as he lives, his ambition is to command battleships, the magnificent 
floating sea palaces, and battleship fleets. This consumes his thought. It 
is natural, therefore, and inevitable that he should consider the needs of 
the country in accordance with his wants and ambition. The naval expert 
knows how to build or superintend the building of ships and how to 
fight them when built. That is his thought, his profession, his ambition. 
Since the General Navy Board Avas established in 1903, every President 
and every Secretary of the Navy, except one, has recognized these pro- 
pensities and limitations of the naval officers or naval experts, and every 
President since 1903, since the Naval Board's first recommendations, and 
every Secretary, except one, until now, have rejected and declined to accept 
their recommendations, and no Congress has ever yet approved them. Mr. 



72 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

Roosevelt did not accept them. Only one of his Secretaries, Mr. Metcalf, 
did. Neither did Mr. Taft, nor his Secretary of the Navy, accept their 
recommendations at any time during his four years' term. Both Mr. 
Wilson and Mr. Secretary Daniels in 1913 declined to accept their recom- 
mendations. They declined again to accept their expert opinions in 1914, 
five months after the European war had begun. They both opposed their 
recommendations and so did Admiral Fletcher, the highest active officer in 
the Navy, Commander of the Atlantic Fleet. But now the papers denounce 
me as an "idiot," as a "traitor to my country; to my party and to the 
Administration " if I do not swallow at one gulp the recommendations of 
the naval experts, because the President and his Secretary of the Navy, 
for the first time, accept them. 

7. THE REGULAR, ORDERLY, NORMAL PROGRAMME: 

At the last session of Congress (this year), the President, the Secre- 
tary of the Navy, Admiral Fletcher, and other naval commanders, and the 
Democrats in Congress opposed the programme of the Hobsons, Gardners 
and other jingoes (much smaller than the present proposed programme). 
The policy of the Administration was summed up before the Naval Com- 
mittee in the words of the Secretary of the ^avj: "It would be most 
unwise for us to act to-day in any particular as we would not have acted 
if there was no war. My theory is that our country ought to he carrying 
on its regular orderly, normal programme as to the Navy. With our poli- 
cies and our American ideas I think the policy recommended in my report 
and adopted by the last session of Congress (and recommended at this ses- 
sion) is the steady development that is needed. It meets the needs of the 
country." The Democrats supported that policy. It was enacted into law. 
This same policy, as I have heretofore shown, is making our Navy bigger, 
stronger and more efficient than ever before — the strongest in the world, 
except that of Great Britain. 

It is my undoubting conviction, that it is most unwise and dangerous 
at this time, especially under the present circumstances, to abandon that 
policy and adopt the big, enormous, revolutionary programme proposed. 

8. WHY MY OPPOSITION TO THE PROGRAIMIME AS AN INDI- 

VIDUAL AND NOT AS MAJORITY LEADER. 
It is not a party or partisan question. The President so declares. 
Everybody knows it is not. It is one for each individual member to decide 
as to his vote for himself. The majority members of the Ways and Means 
Committee, in the first instance, make up the committee assignments of 
the House. I am Chairman of the Committee, which carries with it the 
position of Majority Leader. I shall not use such positions in infiuencing 
in any way any member on the question. Those w^ho oppose my position 
and those who indorse it will be treated alike as to their assignments to 
committees and as to all other matters which I, as such Chairman and 
leader, and the members of the House, individually or collectively, are 
concerned. 

In conclusion: To differ with the President, to differ with my friends, 
in and out of Congress, in the heat of the moment to be severely criticized, 
and sometimes denounced by them, gives me not only exceeding regret, but 
much pain and distress. However, after having given the subject much 
study and thought, being one on the Naval Affairs Committee, and inter- 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 73 

ested for years in naval subjects, I cannot support the programme. In 
deciding on this course I knew full well that a part of the penalty which 
I would have to undergo would be the criticism, the ridicule, the denuncia- 
tion, the misrepresentation and the libeling of myself by the press from 
one end of the country to the other. Having the approval of my judgment 
and conscience, after mature study and thought, and impelled by a sense 
of duty, I take the step, mattering not the consequences, political or other- 
wise, to myself. 



November 20, 1915. 



Claxide Kitchin. 



The following is, in its entirety, the famous HENRY FORD AD- 
VERTISEMENT, printed in many of the leading papers in the United 
States on the 23rd day of February, 1916: 

CONCERNING ''PREPAREDNESS" 
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

The United States, I believe, is confronted by the greatest danger in 
its history. It is not an external danger. As the President said in New 
York on January 27 : " Nobody seriously supposes that the United States 
need fear an invasion of its own territory." 

Our danger is internal. We are confronted by the danger of mili- 
tarism. 

The very burden that caused thousands of men of all races to come 
to the United States in search of a haven of peace, to escape the toils 
of militaristic government, now is being preached throughout the land by 
men, by newspapers, by magazines, moving pictures and, in fact, every 
medium of intelligence. 

Conscription, the base of militarism, is advocated openly. 

And it is all done under the guise of patriotism. The flag is flaunted 
before the eyes of the people and we are told that our " national honor " 
is at stake. 

The flaunting was started by an organization of men known as the 
Na\^ League. It has been taken up by really patriotic men, fearful of 
the danger which this league first discovered. Other of these organiza- 
tions started up and made their cry the danger of invasion and the need 
of preparing for it. The Secretary of the Navy and the other officials 
were made the objects of attack because they, knowing the true conditions, 
refused to become hysterical. 

Congressman Clyde H. Tavenner delivered in the House two remark- 
able speeches — " The World Wide War Trust," and " The Na\'y League 
Unmasked" — giving startling revelations of an organized body of war 
traffickers who promote war and preparations for war — " preparedness." 

He charged that the 'Navy League, which inspired and financed largely 
the present agitation for " preparation," was founded by a group made 
up largely of war traffickers. He also charged that among the most 
active members and officers of the League today are men who not only 
will profit from " preparedness," but who actually hold a monopoly on the 



74 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

materials for war which the Government must purchase — that these war- 
trafficking men are in agreement with war munitioners of Europe, barring 
the possibility of the United States Government purchasing supplies, of 
war at any price but that fixed by the war-traffickers of the United States. 
Mr. Tavenner's charges never have been refuted. 

Tlio very men who pile up the armament of all nations, — and it is 
true that the same firm will often arm both sides in a conflict — will find 
an enemy for any country they arm. And they will arm that enemy, 
too, for the profits on arms are great, and the industry is a monopoly. 

This state of affairs has been brought right home to Americans in 
the past few years in Mexico, where we have seen the same arms manu- 
facturers arming every side. And the President, by raising the embargo 
on arms, certainly did nothing for the peace of the world. 

We ougttt to realize that it is the people who not only pay the bills 
of these munitions makers, but pay the penalty also in the death and 
misery the use of these arms must bring. 

Do we need preparedness? 

The President himself, in his speeches made recently in the middle 
•west, could find no fear of invasion, and his inconsistencies were pointed 
out even by the most ardent editorial advocates of the " preparedness " 
plan. In December, 1914, the President, in his message to Congress, said: 
" Let there be no misconception. The country has been misinformed. We 
have not been negligent of national defense." 

Since that time the President said he had changed his mind. No 
personal vacillation, however, can change the facts, and in spite of rumors 
and suggestions of fear there have been no material facts placed before 
the people of the country to show that the President had any military 
reason for his change of mind. 

The people should think for themselves and demand to know the 
facts. 

Whatever the standing of the country's safety, this much is due 
the people; they should be allowed to share the secret terrorizing dis- 
patches the President declared in his recent tour he received almost 
hourly. The nation is great enough and the people strong enough to bear 
the worst, to know what threatens them. 

Not only that, but it is the right of the people to demand of their 
President tlie causes for his alarm. And if that alarm is not genuine, 
they have a right to know why it was uttered by the head of the nation. 

The people of the United States are patriotic. But it is time for all 
to realize that patriotism does not consist merely of dying for one's 
country. I believe that patriotism consists more in living for the benefit 
of the "whole world, of giving others a chance to live for themselves, their 
country and the world. A man is naturally patriotic, and to cry patriot- 
ism at him as is now being done throughout the country is more of an 
insult than a compliment. 

I believe, too, that many more men have died because of ambition, 
avarice and insincerity than ever died in a just cause. .1 have dedicated 
my life's work to the education of men on this subject, with the hope 
that if war comes again men will know before they march against the 
machine guns whether they are marching for a just cause or for ambi- 
tion, avarice and insincerity. 

It is a regrettable fact that many of the mediums of education in 
the United States have been swayed to the cry for big armament. Not 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 75 

only is this true, but it is equally true that these same organs have bred 
racial hatred by the printing of incendiary news stories and articles, 
preaching fear of one of the European belligerents, giving prominence to 
rumors of unneutral acts of violence, and paying slight regard to official 
denials of the same. 

These organs tell us that one of the warring factions in Europe is 
bleeding to crush militarism, yet in the same pages the assumption of 
this beginning of militarism is declared to be the solemn duty of the 
United States. 

For a hundred years, with Europe fully armed and strong we have 
been safe. Now, with Europe locked in a deadly embrace and bleeding 
to death, we are called upon to fear its invasion of our shores. 

The following from the TSlew York Times of February 9, printed 
prominently by the Times, but not conspicuously treated by the great 
majority of city newspapers, gives some idea of the facts : 

" Washington, February 8 — Testimony that pleased the pacifist ele- 
ment in the House was furnished to the Committees on Military and Naval 
Affairs to-day by General Nelson A. Miles, U. S. A., retired, and Rear 
Admiral Victor Blue, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation. General Miles 
said he did not fear an invasion of the United States and that an invad- 
ing enemy could quickly be driven from the country. Admiral Blue de- 
clared the navy now was ready to meet any enemy it might be called upon 
to encounter in the Pacific." 

And, remember, aside from the fact that we are able to do this, there 
remains still the greater fact that nothing more than generalities regard- 
ing the possibility of any attack have been advanced in justification of 
the attempt to work up an artificial hysteria as a preliminary to inocula- 
tion with the rabies of war. 

Those who have opposed this militaristic scheme have been charac- 
terized as cowards, poltroons and unpatriotic. They are less cowardly 
than the most ardent militarist, because it is fear that is inspiring those 
who are not looking for the profits. And this fear is a fear without foun- 
dation in reason. Is it unpatriotic to wish for world peace instead of 
a universal war over commercial rights of a few men or to uphold an 
unpopular government? 

The sooner the government of the world gets down to a business basis 
the better off" the world will be. I cannot conceive how any business man 
in the United States, after viewing the result of military preparation in 
Europe, realizing the geographical situation of the United States, and 
considering the result of the Dardanelles operations, could so allow his 
fears to be played upon by military bargainers as to approve the plan 
to make this nation an armed camp. There have been fine words about 
" preparedness " and " militarism " being totally different, but Europe 
knows to-day that the only difference is in spelling. 

Congressman Kitchin, who has risked his leadership of the Demo- 
crats in the House to oppose the " preparedness " measure, calls atten- 
tion to the fact that the United States has been spending of late years a 
greater part of its revenue for military equipment than has any other 
nation in the world. With the billions that would be spent under the 
proposed extravagant programme, the taxpayers would be giving nearly 70 
per cent, of what they contribute to government revenue for the support 
of an army and navy. 

Would any man, preparing to fight a fire in his shops, store those 



76 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

same shops with tons of inflammables? Yet that is what "prepared- 
ness " does. And then, of course, must come the inevitable. 

What is the share of the man who pays for all this? 

It is the burden of supporting the vast machine until some few men 
lose their heads and touch the spark to the ready-built kindling-pile. 
Then he must give his life, or come home a cripple. For those who 
remain at the end of the sad folly there is high taxes and crepe on 
the door. 

Men sitting around a table, not men dying in a trench, finally settle 
the differences, anyhow. 

If one hundredth of one per cent, of all that has been spent on this 
kind of " preparedness " had been used to do away with national and 
international differences built up by a diplomacy originating in the Dark 
Ages, war would have ceased long ago. 

Every I man must admit that the method is foolish. And even the 
old time " glory " of war is dead, the victim of science. Then why con- 
tinue? 

Why not begin now to build a machinery of reason to do the work 
that the machinery of force has not accomplished? That is the great 
duty facing those who govern. 

In all the maze of argument for " preparedness " the facts are few. 
But even its most ardent advocates call attention to the coincidence that 
this is a Presidential election year. 

If the cause lies in this fact, and I can hardly believe it, because I 
am not very well versed in political tricks, it is time for the voters to 
remind their Congressmen and any other candidates who may seek their 
favor that the people will not spend their money to arm for invading 
ghosts conjured up by the President or any other man, be he a real 
patriot or a munitions-patriot. 

Let the President and others who are preaching this doctrine of fear 
point out the enemy, let them prove the enemy comes upon us, and every 
American is willing to lay down his fortune and his life at the feet of 
the President, as Americans have done before. 

But the same Americans, a hard-headed business people, will not lay 
down a nickel if they become convinced that they are paying merely for 
an election or a re-election to the White House under the guise of defense 
of home and fireside. And these Americans have a very disconcerting way 
of showing their practical impatience with fairy tales. 

I strongly urge every American who is interested in this subject that 
should interest all, to write to Hon. Clyde H. Tavenner, House of Repre- 
sentative Office Building, Washington, D. C, for the speeches revealing 
the motives at the bottom of the " preparedness " agitation. 

I strongly urge every man and woman who desires that this country 
should remain at peace to write a protest against the extravagant pro- 
gramme now in Congress, to write to his Congressman, to the two United 
States Senators from his State, and to the President of the United States. 
A sentence or two will do. But make your meaning plain. 

Remember, too, that the men now in Congress who have come out 
strongly against the project need encouragement from home. They face 
generally a solid wall of ridicule or silence in the press of the cities, and 
human nature finds it hard to bear up before such a constant hammering, 
even though the object of the attacks feels that the pressure rings not of 
sincerity. If you feel that the country's safety is being jeopardized by 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 77 

political manipulation, then make your protest a political one, so that 
it will strike the deeper. 

I am having this statement printed in the advertising columns of 
newspapers and magazines throughout the United States. Others will 
follow. I have no other purpose than to save America from bloodshed 
and its young men from conscription. I feel that if this militaristic bur- 
den is assumed by the country, the United States within 10 years will 
be in turmoil, its industries paralyzed, and its men, instead of being at 
work in peaceful industry, will be dying in trenches. And I feel, too, 
that these men will not be dying to defend their country, as we are now 
being told, but will perish in the conquest of other men who have a right 
to live in happiness and peace. 

Henry Ford. 
February 22, 1916. 



The following is, in its entirety, an address delivered by DR. NICHO- 
LAS MURRAY BUTLER at the meeting to organize a League for the 
Limitation of Armaments, held at the Railroad Club, New York, Decem- 
ber 18, 1914, as published by the Carnegie Endowment for International 
Peace : 

THE PREPAREDNESS OF AMERICA 

By NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 

This movement is in the view of all of us an American movement. 
It is a truly patriotic movement and one wholly devoid of any interest 
in or relation to partisan politics. The opportunity that to-day confronts 
the people of the United States and the decisions that are soon to be 
made by them — indeed the decisions that are now being made in the hearts 
and minds of the people — are of graver significance and more far-reaching 
importance than any that have preceded them in a full half century. 

We must not permit ourselves to be placed in the position of opposing 
the fullest possible inquiry by the agents of the people of the United 
States into their public affairs and into every detail of their public busi- 
ness. For one, I should welcome a properly conducted inquiry into the 
military and naval expenditures made by the government of the United 
States in recent years, because I believe that the first result of such in- 
quiry would be to show that under better administrative conditions and 
under more businesslike management, we should have gotten much more 
for the money spent — or, to put it in another way, we should have gotten 
what we need for less money. Such an inquiry is something quite apart 
from an agitation for greatly increased military and naval expenditures 
and from the vigorous exploitation of our nation's so-called lack of pre- 
paredness for war. 

Moreover, we all recognize that it is the constitutional duty of the 
government of the United States to be in possession of such force as will 
enable it to suppress domestic insurrection, to enforce the laws and to 
protect the States from invasion. That duty is placed upon the govern- 
ment of the United States by the constitution. The experience of one 
himdred years proves with reasonable completeness that we know how to 



78 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

do all these things and that we have been able to do them without em' 
barking upon a policy of competitive armament building. 

The situation that now confronts us is one in which we are invited 
not to maintain the traditional American policy but to depart from it. 
And we are asked to depart from it in the face of the most impressive 
and emphatic lesson that history records that the traditional American 
policy has been right. 

The great war in Europe has produced two kinds of reaction here in 
the United States. It has produced in one set of minds the reaction of 
imitation; it has produced in another set of minds the reaction of avoid- 
ance. We stand with those who experience the reaction of avoidance. 

When we are told in terms of most vivid eloquence that we must be 
prepared for war, I ask "For what Avar and for war with whom?" Are 
we to be' prepared for war with tlie Dominion of Canada, our neighbor 
to the north? If so, how shall we set about better protecting the long, 
invisible line that separates the Dominion from the territory of the United 
States, extending over more than three thousand five hundred miles, than 
we have been doing for one hundred years? We have protected it so 
thoroughly that a century of peace has marked the relations of the two 
peoples on either side of this undefended line. How better can we vio- 
tect our valuable commerce on the Great Lakes than by adhering with 
rigid insistence to the terms of the Rush-Bagot agreement, now nearly 
one hundred years old, by which we limited ourselves to an armed force 
on the lakes of two small and long since antiquated gunboats? • 

But if we are not to be prepared for war with Canada, are we to be 
prepared for war with Europe? If so, with what nation in Europe, and 
why are we to prepare just now? There would have been some theoretical 
force five years ago in the argument that we should be prepared to defend 
ourselves against invasion from across the sea; but to-day, when our 
friends in every land are bleeding to death before our eyes, when the 
nations of Europe are exhausting their manhood, impoverishing their re- 
sources, destroying their commerce and their trade, bankrupting their 
treasuries and using up the raw materials of armaments in the construc- 
tion of the completed instrumentalities of death — why, when the nations 
of Europe are about to be reduced to helplessness through exhaustion and 
starvation should we arm ourselves against any one of them? Who is 
this invisible, this unknown, this unheralded enemy against whose attack 
we are to prepare ourselves at such great expense? As practical men and 
women dealing with facts and facing the realities of politics and of life 
we ask our militaristic friends for a bill of particulars. Are we to arm 
to the teeth and draw our resources away from that needed social and in- 
dustrial improvement which thrusts problems upon us on every hand in 
order to expend them upon useless armaments against nobody? 

And whose suspicions are we to arouse? When the whole world is 
looking to us and when the wise men of every nation are saying to Amer- 
ica, " You at least are free from the curse of militarism, you at least are 
in a position to exercise moral suasion and moral leadership," shaH we 
at such a moment climb down from that high position of consequence in 
order to prepare ourselves to take part in the terrible turmoil of physical 
conflict and public murder? I say, no. 

We are concerned then not merely with a declaration of high princi- 
ple and of motive and purpose, but we are concerned with the serious 
business of the education of public opinion. We must direct ourselves 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 79 

to the persuasive, constant and persistent instruction of the public mind, 
to the end tliat it may see that the realities of this situation are with the 
lovers of peace and of international amity and that the imaginary and 
theoretical aspects of it are with those who desire us to prepare for an 
miknown war. 

In a famous book, Mr. Herbert Spencer traced the history of civiliza- 
tion from a period of militaristic to a later period of industrial organiza- 
tion and life. He indicated just what had happened in the world as man- 
kiud made this progress and lie pointed out in what ways men had ad- 
vanced and how they had acquired wealth, intelligence, comfort and mani- 
fold privileges by shedding the old clothes of militarism and putting on 
the garments which belong to a life of free and competitive industry. We 
do not wish to go backward; we do not wish to turn back the hands on 
the clock of progress and return this nation of ours to the earlier and 
cruder militaristic stage of civilization. We wish rather to pass on into 
a new and third stage which opens before us as we speak. 

As Mr. Spencer traced the progress of civilization from militarism 
to industry, so to-day Ave can almost see the progress of civilization from 
industrialism to the stage of a new and higher morality, to a new and 
higher conception of international conduct and to an enforcement by 
reason and morality of those high standards of judgment and action that 
mark the civilized man in every countrj^ in the world. 

For a contest to gain the position of leadership in that movement, 
this nation is prepared. For such a struggle America is armed. By con- 
fining our army and navy — sufficient, competent and well furnished — to 
the proper limits of their activity in a democracy, we shall then keep 
ourselves free to build that great structure of wisdom, justice, amity 
nnd peace on which the continuance and advancement of civilization ab- 
solutely depend. 

Therefore, I do not conceive of this gathering in terms of protest; I 
conceive of it rather in terms of an offering of constructive leadership 
in a great forward movement. We will not permit ourselves to be 
weighted down with the discarded armor of the Middle Ages, the only 
proper place for which is in the museums of battered Europe. We wish 
to be set free. We wish our children to be free. We wish our minds, our 
labor and our activity to be free. We wish our nation to be free to con- 
tinue to build a great and beautiful temple of freedom to which the wise 
and good of every nation will continue to repair, and toward which the 
nations of stricken Europe will turn for the friendly hand of helpfulness 
when the sxm sets on those Continental fields of carnage yonder. 



The following is, in its entirety: 

A MEMORIAL TO THE MEMBERS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE 
OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF 
AMERICA FROM THE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS OF 
PENNSYLVANIA, NEW JERSEY, DELAWARE AND PARTS OF 
MARYLAND:— 
In view of the present agitation and propaganda for a large increase 

in the military and naval strength of our country, the Society of Friends, 

through its Representative Body, respectfully presents to you the following 

memorial: 



80 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

From its inception this Society has believed that all war is unright- 
eous, and that military service is contrary to. the teaching and the life 
of Christ; that it is the duty of nations as it is of individuals to practice 
Christianity by basing their actions on justice, good will and love, which 
alone can heal the social and economic diseases of mankind. In main- 
taining this faith many Friends in the past have suffered imprisonment, 
loss of property, sickness and death, and, we believe, many to-day would 
not shrink from similar sacrifice if it were required. It is not, therefore, 
a lack of courage, or an easy security that prompts our appeal, but rather 
a patriotism that includes the welfare of all the nations of mankind, and 
an abiding faith in the ultimate victory of human brotherhood. We are 
willing to sacrifice more than war would call for in the interests of peace. 

Basing our plea on this broad Christian ground, we would briefly 
state some other considerations against committing our country to a policy 
of militai'y expansion. 

1. Advocates of "preparedness" urge national defense as the only 
justification for their programme. Aggressive warfare by the United 
States is inconceivable, unless the temper of the people is changed by the 
existence of greater armaments. 

It is our conviction that: — 

(a) We are already defended geographically by two oceans, by 
an unfortified northern boundary of three thousand miles that has 
proved a sure guarantee of peace for a century, and by a southern 
frontier where self-restraint and magnanimous patience have main- 
tained peace in the face of extreme provocation. 

(b) The citizens of the United States are a composite people of 
many racial strains. We are connected so intimately by ties of blood 
and sympathy with all the nations of the old world that public opinion 
would make a war with any of the great powers practically impossi- 
ble. These international bonds are a pledge of continued friendship 
and good will. 

(c) The terrible war now in progress is exhausting the strength 
of the combatants. The inconceivable wreckage and waste of life, 
treasure, jndustry, commerce and intellectual and moral force are re- 
ducing all the great European powers to a condition from which they 
cannot soon recover. This is a fact and not a supposition. Japan, 
the only other power mentioned as a possible antagonist, has shown 
a consistent desire to maintain friendly relations with our country, 
and is already heavily burdened by taxes and an overwhelming war 
debt. 

2. A policy of military expansion on a grand scale will commit the 
United States to militarism. 

True democracy and militarism are contradictory. The one must 
destroy the other. 

It is almost impossible to arrest a militaristic policy when once 
it is launched. Fear is added to fear, false ideals flourish, interna- 
tional friendship changes to suspicion, special interests warp the 
public mind. 

The true greatness of the United States in international affairs 
has not rested upon naval and military force, but upon candor, and 
good will, a high sense of national honor and fundamental justice. 

3. The great war is abundant proof that great armaments are not 
a protection against attack. In the hands of a militaristic administration 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 81 

they may be a fertile cause of war. They are a constant menace on the 
one hand and an invitation to aggression on the other. They fill the 
popular imagination, so that if differences arise between nations the peo- 
ple cry out for war, and thus force becomes the basis of settlement rather 
than justice and equity. 

The genius of the United States has been for arbitration and the judi- 
cial settlement of international disputes. 

These are a few of many reasons against committing the United 
States to a military policy at this time of popular unrest. 

We believe it is a grave moment in the history of our country, and 
we appeal to you who bear the heavy burden of responsibility, to meet the 
crisis in the spirit of Christian patriotism. Your action in this Congress 
may bind the shackles of the old world militarism upon our continent, or 
free it for true world leadership in the cause of enduring liberty based 
on justice, brotherhood and peace. 

The destinies of the other American Republics are intimately connected 
■with those of the United States. They are anxiously awaiting your action. 
A military policy adopted by the United States will create suspicion among 
them, and they will begin to arm against us. Thus fear will beget fear, 
and suspicion, suspicion. 

Instead, therefore, of acting at once and hastily on the question of 
" preparedness " against dangers probably imaginary, and certainly remote 
in time, we strongly urge upon this Administration, and upon the Congress 
now assembled, the calling at once by the United States of a great confer- 
ence of all the American Republics for solemn council that may guarantee 
perpetual peace and community of interest in this hemisphere. 

William Penn, the Founder of Pennsylvania, conceived a " Plan for 
the Peace of Europe." If it had been fairly tried, great armies and navies 
would have disappeared long ago and the present war would have been 
impossible. We citizens of the Commonwealth where Penn tried his 
" Holy Experiment," and believers in his religious faith, urge upon you at 
this time as an act of the truest and noblest patriotism, consideration 
of a Plan for the Peace of America. A League of American Republics 
united for co-operation, mutual progress and reciprocity in trade and 
commerce, and in the things of the mind and the spirit would for- 
ever safeguard the peace of this Western Hemisphere, and challenge Eu- 
rope to imitate the American example. Men of faith and vision agree that 
this will be a reality in the future. Will there ever be a better opportunity 
than to-day? 

Signed on behalf and by direction of the Representative Meeting. 

William B. Habvey, Clerk. 

Twelfth Month 10, 1915. 

304 Arch Street, Philadelphia. 



The following paragraphs are: 

Extracts from THE CAUSE OF THE WAR, by CHARLES EDWARD 

JEFFERSON, Pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle, New York City. 

Published by Thomas Y. Crowell Company, December, 1914. 

. . . . " The war is the result of a false philosophy of national 

life, a philosophy which maintains that the foundation of all power is 

physical force, and that greatness is to be computed in terms of brute 



83 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

strength. It is a barbaric philosophy which has been driven from one field 
to another because of the havoc it wrought, and we now see its operations 
in a realm in which it is working its ruin on a scale vast and appalling. 
Out of this philosophy there develops a policy — the policy of armed peace, 
the policy which bases peace on the fear which is inspired by deadly weapons. 
The policy was long tried in the realm of individual life. Men went daily 
armed to the teeth, to protect themselves against one another. The practice 
led to interminable brawls, and feuds, and duels, until at last it was 
given up. Only rowdies now carry knives and guns. The policy was tho-n 
adopted by cities. Cities preserved the peace by arming themselves. Every 
city had its wall, its moat, its drawbridges. Its armed forces were always 
held in leash ready for either defense or attack. The history of those days 
is a disgusting record of deadly rivalries, rapine, and slaughter. The 
policy Ivas at last banished from the realm of interurban life. Cities sitr.- 
ated within narrow limits bound themselves together into leagues, and 
numerous small states took their place on the European map. These prov- 
inces adopted, however, the policy of armed peace, and the result was con- 
stant jealousies and bickerings and frequent bloody collisions. The little 
states grew sick at last of the exhausting strife, and rolled themselves into 
great states, which became known as world powers. But the old policy of 
armed peace, which the common sense of men had banished from the realm 
of individual, and interurban, and interprovincial life, was retained in the 
realm of international life. Men knew that little states could not wisely 
adopt it, but they supposed that large states could. They banished it from 
the administration of little pov/ers, and retained it in the scheme of the 
great powers. Tlie result is a great war. The war has come out of a 
false policy, and the false policy came out of a false philosophy. We are 
to seek, then, "the cause of the present horror in the realm of ideas. It is 
sometimes asserted that it does not make any difference what you believe. 
The fact is that everything depends on what you believe. When men be- 
lieve the truth, it is well with the world. When they believe error, dark- 
ness falls on the lands. 

Let us look a moment at this philosophy. The modern name of it is 
militarism. Militarism has a creed with three articles. Article one asserts 
that war is a good thing. It has brought many blessings in the past. It 
will bring many more in the future. It is indispensable for national well- 
being. Without war, the virile virtues gradually decay, and the moral 
fiber of nations rots. This is the plain teaching of all modern militarists 
from von Moltke to von Bernhardi. Article second is a necessary deduc- 
tion from the first. Since war is good and indispensable, and sure to come, 
because it lies in the structure of the great world plan, therefore the su- 
preme duty of a nation is to be ready for it. Equip yourselves with ail tho 
necessary apparatus. You must lay in an enormous stock of guns and j 
ammunition. You must have the latest weapons. Old weapons are value- 
less. You must buy the costliest of them, for only these are effective when I 
the day of battle comes. No matter what the cost is, the nation must ' 
submit to it, even if it is compelled to mortgage the resources of genera- | 
tions yet unborn. But weapons are of no value unless men know how to 
use them. These modern instruments of blood arc complicated, and they | 
require a deal of practice. Therefore great masses of men must spend 
their life in drilling. They must practice constantly war games on the i 
sea, and on the land, and in the air, for " Preparedness " is the one golden 
motto of a nation. The third article of the creed is that army and naval 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 83 

officials constitute a superior caste. They are the anointed custodians of 
the nation's honor, the divine guardians of the nation's treasures, the 
saviors of the nation's life. Therefore they are th« safest counselors of 
diplomats, and the wisest advisers of presidents and kings. The whole doc- 
trine is tersely put by a rear-admiral in our navy in an article published 
by him shortly before the opening of this war. The gist of his argument 
is as follows: The influence of an ambassador of any nation depends on 
the number and size of the guns behind him. It is by means of guns that 
a nation exerts pressure on its neighbors. This brings the naval officer 
into the realm of international diplomacy. He must stand by the side of 
the civil diplomat and assist him in his work. Indeed, he is the better man 
of the two, because of his superior training and his longer term of office, 
and, therefore, the officers of the United States Navy are the only body of 
men on whom our republic can continuously and safely rely. This is a 
very frank and modest statement of a militarist who is sure of the divine 
mission of the navy. Not all officers in our army and navy are militarists. 
Many of them, however, are, and the creed wiiich they hold is the creed 
held by militarists the world over: War is good, be ready, and leave the 
direction of international business to us! 

»♦**♦** 

Militarism, wherever you find it, is cocky, arrogant and brutal. It is 
everywhere and always the deadly and implacable enemy of mankind. 

One of its fundamental principles is, " Strike first, and strike hard." 
That is the law of all militarists, and that, you observe, is the law of the 
jungle, it is the creed of the tiger. The tiger always leaps with the swift- 
ness of lightning. Its victim must be crushed in the first attack. Mili- 
tarism goes back to the jungle for its models. If you are settling disputes 
by reason, you can take time to consider and sift and weigh ; if you are 
settling disputes by guns, you must be quick as a tiger. There is no time 
for reason. One of the most appalling features of the opening of the war 
was the lack of time to consider. Of the one hundred and fifty-nine tele- 
grams and notes in the English White Papers, the one of greatest pathos 
is that of Sir Edward Gray to Sir Edward Goschen on August 1, " I still 
believe that it might be possible to secure peace if only a little respite in 
time can be gained." Time was the one thing essential, and, alas, there 
was no time to be gotten. The cavalrymen were all on their horses, and 
in an instant they were over the border. You have seen horses dash out 
of the engine-house when the fire alarm struck. With just such swiftness 
dashed the armies of Europe into the arena of war. We are ready! That 
was the shout that went from mouth to mouth around the whole circle of 
nations. For forty years they had been preparing, standing each one in 
shining armor, and when the crisis came, there was no possibility of delay. 
For a generation the genius and the wealth of the nations had been ex- 
pended on the apparatus of war. They had all prepared for war, and it 
came. It came easily. It came in spite of the efforts of the diplomats to 
hold it off. The machinery of peace had secured but scant attention, and 
it broke down under the strain of the fateful hour. The messengers of 
peace were just a little late all the way round the circle because the horses 
of war were on a gallop. One cannot read the White Papers of the 
various countries without being impressed by the fact that none of the 
ambassadors wanted this war. They were dragged into it because all the 
nations were lashed tight to their guns. When once the great masses of 
steel began to move, their momentum was irresistible. From that instant 



84 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

Europe began to be ground to powder by the armaments she had created 

for preserving peace. 

Militarism is the absolute negation of Christianity. The one exhibits 
a mailed fist, the other shows you a hand that is pierced. The one carries 
a big stick, the other carries the cross on which the Prince of Glory died. 
The one declares that might makes right, the other affirms that right makes 
might. The one says that the foundation of all things is force, the other 
says that the foundation of all things is love. Militarism is materialism 
in its deadliest manifestation. It is atheism in its most brutal and blatant 
incarnation. It is the enemy of God and man. It must be overthrown. 
Every nation which becomes its devotee is doomed. Militaristic nations are 
broken tc pieces like potter's vessels. So did the Almighty break Ninevah 
and Babylon, Persia, and Greece, and Rome, and so, unless they repent, will 
He break in fragments the so-called great powers of Europe. He will, if 
necessary, convert the capitals of our modern world into dust heaps like 
those of Thebes and Memphis, and begin the world anew. He will overturn 
and overturn, until he whose right it is, shall reign. He that hath an ear, 
let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches — and to the 
nations ! 



The following is an EDITORIAL in its entirety by HAMILTON HOLT 
published in TEE INDEPENDENT of October 18, 1915: 

SHOULDER ARMS! 

Henry A. Wise Wood is alarmed. As President of the American So- 
ciety of Aeronautical Engineers he attended the other day one of the 
" war luncheons " being held every week at the Technology Club of this 
city, and there made a few remarks. According to the papers Mr. Wood 
is said to have said: 

" Records in Washington show that a certain European nation could 
land in the United States within forty-eight days 750,000 men, with 250,- 
000 horses and munitions sufficient for a three months' campaign, with 
half the transports available before the present war. . . . Furthermore 
similar records show that a nation on the Pacific could land 350,000 
troops on the Pacific Coast within sixty-one days with half its trans- 
ports." 

Though it may show a culpable disregard for our national safety, 
we must defer for the present consideration of the "certain European 
nation." Whichever it may be, it has sufficient troubles of its own at 
this moment and we can assume it will not attack us during the next 
few weeks, certainly not before Congress meets and increases taxes three 
or four fold so as to relieve our " criminal unpreparedness." 

But how about that " nation on the Pacific " ? Can it possibly be 
Japan? If so, we should Avorry. 

Just think how easy it would be for the little yellow men to seize 
the Pacific Coast, proceed up over the mountain passes of the Sierras 
and Rockies and thence overrun the corn belt of the Middle West. Indeed, 
once in the Mississippi Valley there would be no stopping them until the 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 85 

pie bolt of New England and the fried chicken belt of " our beloved South- 
laud " were completely occupied. 

In the first place the astute Japanese statesmen, having reversed their 
historic policy of maintaining friendly relations with the United States, 
would have to consider how 60,000,000 people could invade territory occu- 
pied by 100,000^000 people, 5,000 miles away. Having resolved that this 
was easy enough, they would then proceed to mobilize their present army 
of 250,000 and increase it sufficiently so that 350,000 troops could be 
spared to cross the seas. Of course they would have to increase the army 
much more than 350,000 in order to have at home enough to protect the 
Empire in case the United States sailed around the back way and at- 
tacked tiiem in the rear. 

But before the Japanese armada could attack America, the United 
States Navy would have to be sunk, for as Napoleon proved long ago, no 
overseas invasion can take place as long as the enemies' fleet is afloat. 
But as no fleet can operate 4,000 miles from its base at more than fifty 
per cent, of its strength, if Admiral Vreeland of our navy is to be be- 
lieved, Japan, whose navy is now much inferior to ours, could hardly 
concentrate a fieet a third the strength of the American on the Pacific 
Coast. 

But we know the Japanese are wonderful fighters, so we will assume 
that they have sunk our entire fleet. Then all they would have to do 
would be to clear the seas of our submarines and mines. The fact that 
England, with the greatest navy in the world, has not yet dared attempt 
to land an expedition on the German or Belgian coast, or Germany upon 
the English coast, is no proof that the abler yellow-skinned men would 
not succeed. 

It will now be perfectly safe for the armada to set sail and be at our 
shores in the sixty-one days specified. The fact that some of these days 
have been consumed in waiting for the American fleet to be destroyed 
need give no concern. We know there are some four fast liners that go 
from Yokohoma to San Francisco in three weeks. No doubt the 1,000 
slower, smaller transports that would be needed could be readily put in 
commission and convoyed over without mishap within the " sixty-one 
days." All the armada would then have to do would be to disembark 
its troops, demolish the fortified coast defenses and take the several lines 
of trenches that had been thrown up from Lower California to Puget^ 
Sound. 

We all know how easily the coast defenses can be taken — at the 
Dardanelles, for instance — and how easily trenches have been captured 
in the present war, as the men on the firing lines universally attest. No 
doubt the Japanese would seize our entrenchments with but few casual- 
ties. And to make certainty doubly certain, they would unquestionably 
bring with them sufficient 42 centimeter guns and ammunition, so that 
they would not be caught napping as the Russians have been. Despite 
the poverty of Japan and the enormous taxes owing to the Russo-Japan- 
ese War, she would find no difficulty in sending over enough ammunition 
so as to use up a million dollars' worth a day, as is frequently done before 
a charge by the Germans. 

Having, then, with their considerably smaljer navy, sunk our fleet, 
eluded our submarines and mines, and with their army taken our trenches 
and driven our regular army and militia back over the Rockies, the Jap- 
anese would not find it very difficult to dispose of our " contemptible little 



86 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

army" of 1,000,000 volunteers, that would have been drilling night and 
day in the meantime. 

And thus, in the shake of a lamb's tail, the subjugation of the United 
States would be complete. Mr. Henry A. Wise Wood deserves the thanks 
of the republic for his warning. To arms, Americans, to arms! 



THE PROS AND CONS OF PREPAREDNESS 

The Literary Digest of February 26, 1916, contained the following 
topics and suggestions for the discussion of national defense, both affirma- 
tive and i^egative, and I quote same here in its entirety, inclusive of intro- 
ductory captions: 

OUTLINE FOR DEBATE 

Preparedness is the subject of political discussion and the topic of 
conversation everywhere, and it Avill continue to fill the public mind for 
many months to come. One of the most effective ways of getting a clear 
view of all the ramifications of a subject is to " brief " it. We believe the 
following debate, prepared by an expert, will interest our great body of 
subscribers, and will prove valuable to the vast army of pupils who are 
studying The Literary Digest as a text in their classrooms. The general 
plan of this outline is in harmony with the policy of The Digest to give 
both sides of great questions without expressing any editorial opinion of 
its own. 

BRIEF FOR DISCUSSION ON PREPAREDNESS 

AFFIRMATIVE 

I. Pbepabedness is Necessaey. 
(A) War is probable. 

(1) We are now having serious trouble with England over 

trade and ocean rights, 
(a) American-owned vessels have been seized by Great 
Britain. 

(2) We are on the verge of a diplomatic break with Germany 

and Austria. 

(a) These courttries will not abandon their submarine 

warfare. 

(b) We have aroused their enmity by exporting war 

munitions to the Allies. 

(3) We have set ourselves up as the guardians of international 

law. 
(a) Ancona, Lusitania and Persia cases. 

(4) We are usurping the trade of nations that are now en- 

gaged in a world-war over the question of trade. 

(5) We must be prepared to defend the Monroe Doctrine 

against : 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 87 

(a) European nations. 

(i) Germany and other countries have large trade 
interests in South America. 

(b) Japan. 

(i) The Magdalena Bay incident, 
(ii) The enormous settlements in California and 
South America. 

(6) We are having serious trouble with Mexico, which may 

lead to intervention. 

(7) The guardianship of the Panama Canal may prove a 

source of danger. 
(B) We are at present not properly protected. 

( 1 ) Our Navy is inadequate. 

(a) It is not large enough to protect our enormous 

coast-line, 
(i) Report of Naval Board, 1903. 
(ii) Admiral Fletcher's report, 1916. 
(iii) Testimony of naval experts before Naval 
Committee, printed in Representative 
Gardner's Manual. 

(b) The guardianship of the Panama Canal necessi- 

tates an increased Navy. 

(c) Our ships are not equipped with sufficient men. 

(i) Testimony of Admiral Badger before Naval 
Committee, printed in Representative 
Gardner's Manual. 

(2) Our coast defenses are inadequate. 

(a) Our fort guns are smaller than those on foreign 

war-ships, 
(i) Our biggest guns are but 12-inch guns, while 
modern dreadnoughts carry 16-inch guns. 

(b) Our fortifications are not provided with sufficient 

ammunition, 
(i) Testimony of General Weaver, printed in 
Representative Gardner's Manual. 

(c) We have not a sufficient number of coast fort3. 

(i) Report of Admiral Fletcher, 1916. 

(3) Our Army is inadequate. 

(a) Our Army is too small for the territory it has to 

protect, 
(i) Report of War Department, 1916. 

(b) We have no efficient Army reserve force. 

(i) Report of War College, December, 1915. 

(c) Our Army is not properly equipped. 

(i) Reports of Generals Wood and Wotherspoon, 
printed in Representative Gardner's 
Manual. 

II. Pbepabedness is Pbacticable. 

(A) The country is almost a unit in its demands for increased 

armaments. 
(1) Both Democrats and Republicans in favor. 

(B) Our resources are unlimited. 



88 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

(C) Any plan that Congress may adopt can be put into successful 
operation. 
(1) Six plans have already been proposed: 

(a) The Wilson plan. 

(b) The War College plan. 

(c) The plan of Senator Chamberlain. 

(d) The Roosevelt plan. 

(e) The Regular Army plan. 

(f) The National Guard plan, 

III. Preparedness is Desirable. 

(A) It will insure peace. 

( 1 ) Our strength will be a warning to our enemies. 

(B) It will promote prosperity. 

' ( 1 ) Our commerce will be protected on the seas. 

(C) It will cause peace proposals of the United States to meet with 

tlie respect of European nations. 
(1) These nations will realize that we make peace proposals 
because we are sincere and not because we are 
i inefficient. 

NEGATIVE 

I. Preparedness is Unnecessary, 

(A) War is improbable. 

( 1 ) There is no reason for war. 

(a) All our differences can be settled by diplomacy. 

(i) Hocking case. 

(b) Pan-Americanism will insure a universal respect 

for the Monroe Doctrine. 

(2) We have no entangling alliances. 

(3) The strongest nations of the world are bankrupt. 

(a) The foremost nations of the world are compelled to 
borrow from the United States. 

(4) Attack is improbable. 

(a) The United States is geographically isolated from 

the rest of the world. 

(b) An enemy's ships would find it impossible to secure 

supplies 30 far from their base. 

(B) Our present armaments are sufficient for our needs. 

(1) We have a Navy strong enough to meet the best fleet an 

enemy could send to our shores, 
(a) Testimony of Admiral Blue before Naval Com- 
mittee, February 8, 1916. 

(2) Our Army is adequate for our needs. 

(a) Mexico, Philippine Islands. 

(3) Our coast defenses are adequate. 

(a) We are at present fortifying points that hitherto 

were unfortified. 
( i ) Rockaway. 

(b) We are building 16-in guns for use in our forts. 

(c) The present war has shown the impossibility of 

capturing coast forts, 
(i) The Dardanelles. 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 89 

(d) Testimony of General Miles before Senate Com- 
mittee, February 8, 1916. 
(4) We are able to manufacture more war munitions than 
any great enemy could transport. 
(a) We are exporting a tremendous supply to the 
Allies. 

II. Pbepakedness is Impracticable. 

(A) The cost would be enormous and would impose a needless burden 

of taxation upon the people of the United States. 
( 1 ) We already spend more for defense than any other 
country, 
(a) Comparison of budgets. 

(B) The sentiment of the people is against any plan of enforced 

preparedness. 

(C) We would be unable to procure men to give up their occupations 

for military training where there is no clearly defined need. 

(D) No proper mode of providing the money necessary for pre- 

preparedness has yet been proposed. 

(E) All the plans for military and naval increase are faulty. 

III. Preparedness is Undesirable. 

(A) It would cause us to lose an excellent opportunity for securing 

universal peace. 
( 1 ) If the United States should increase its armaments and 
then make proposals to other nations to disarm, it 
would cause these nations to suspect our motives. 

(B) It would antagonize other nations and start an enormous 

building contest. 
( 1 ) Other nations would be compelled to increase their arma- 
ments to preserve a balance of power. 

(C) The money necessary to provide further preparedness could be 

used in better projects. 
( 1 ) It could be used to establish a permanent world peace. 

(D) It would provoke war. 

( 1 ) Other nations would fear that this sudden increase in 
our military and naval strength would prove detri- 
mental to them, and they would attack us before we 
got too strong. 

(E) Industrial progress is better than military preparedness, 

(F) It would result in militarism. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

" Defenseless America," Hudson Maxim. 
Report of Naval Board, 1903. 
Report of Admiral Fletcher, January, 1916. 
Report of Major-General Wood, January, 1916. 
Report of War Department, December, 1915. 

Testimony of Naval and Military Officers in House of Representatives, 
contained in Representative Gardner's Manual. 
Congressional Record. 
Reader's Guide. 



90 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

"LiTEBABY Digest" Refebences. 

Vol. 49, Dec. 5, 1914, p. 1107. 

Vol. 49, Dec. 19, 1914, pp. 1205-7. 

Vol. 49, Dec. 26, 1914, pp. 1267-8. 

Vol. 50, Jan. 23, 1915, pp. 137-8. 

Vol. 50, June 5, 1915. pp. 1314-16. 

Vol. 50, June 26, 1915, pp. 1529-30. 

Vol. 51, Aug. 7, 1915, pp. 236-7. 

Vol. 51, Sept. 11, 1915, pp. 527-8. 

Vol. 51, Nov. 20, 1915, pp. 1143-5, 1162-3. 

Vol. 51, Nov. 27, 1915, pp. 1207-9, 1209-10, 1211, 1213-14. 

VoJ. 51, Dec. 4, 1915, pp. 1267-8. 

Vol. 51, Dec. 11, 1915, pp. 1333-6. 

Vol. 51, Dec. 18, 1915, pp. 1411-14. 

Vol. 51, Dec. 25, 1915, pp. 1459-61, 1462, 1463-4, 1467-9. 

Vol. 52, Jan. 1, 1916, pp. 6-7, 11-12. 

Vol. 52, Jan. 8, 1916, pp. 51-53, 53-54, 55-56, 58-59, 60. 

Vol. 52, Jan. 15, 1916, pp. 101-3. 

Vol. 52, Jan. 22, 1916, pp. 157-8, 161-3, 165-8. 

Vol. 52, Jan. 29, 1916, pp. 213-16, 219-20. 

Vol. 52, Feb. 5, 1916, pp. 269-70. 

Extracts from Argument of the REV. WM. CARTER, D.D., Pastor Throop 
Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., in public debate with 
the Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D., of Columbus, Ohio, at the 
Broadway Tabernacle, Fifty-sixth Street and Broadway, New York 
City, February 8, 1916. 

THE NECESSITY OF PREPAREDNESS 

War is the world's great anachronism. From the cradle of savagery to 
the crowning of mind and manhood it has always been an anachronism, 
for each day marks progress and every evening is better than the morning 
as man reaches out into higher and to nobler things. Soldiers and 
statesmen even, who are said by some to make of war a business, by no 
means love it but long with all the rest of the world for its final abolition. 
Sherman's laconic saying: " War is Hell," has become historic. Grant had 
the same hatred for it and Chinese Gordon prayed daily, even in the 
midst of his campaigns, that its power might be forever broken. Lord 
Brougham characterized it as " the greatest of human crimes including 
indeed all others," Charles Sumner spoke of it as " unjust, un-Christian, 
monstrous." while Warburton called it " the blackest mischief ever 
breathed from Hell, its demons marching with every army and bivouacking 
in every camp." 

It is not hard then to prove that War is an anachronism and always 
has been, but in proving it we are admitting that it is an entity, a fact 
that must be faced and reckoned with in all the affairs of life. 

"The time is out of joint: O cursed spite 
That ever I was born to set it right." 

That is the hard thing for us who maintain the argument for Pre- 
paredness. We know the time is out of joint. We think that our Pacifist 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 91 

friends were born to set it right just as much as we are, but if they will 
not do it then we will have to do it ourselves, and by vicarious labor, 
taking their burdens upon our own shoulders. Men may cry "Peace! 
Peace! but there is no Peace." War is a monstrous, horrid, bloody fact, 
and however distasteful the task it is something to which we all must 
set ourselves if we would hasten its abolishment. (Applause.) 
♦ »»*«»» 

It is not merely the men, however, who have caused Pacifism to fail, 
it is also their method which is " the dream of the dreamer who dreams 
that he's been dreaming," — the method of moral suasion. It is a beautiful 
theory, it is hard indeed to say anything against it, as everyone would 
rather speak in favor of it and see it succeed, but the hard, cold facts of 
history and experience show us that it has failed and failed miserably. 

Man is naturally a reasoning being, he likes sentiment, but he likes it 
in the right place. If a mad dog attacks him and he has a club, he will 
not sentimentalize with the dog and say "Nice Doggie! Good Doggie! 
Doggie mustn't bite ! " but he will promptly club the dog, and if the dogs 
about him are particularly inclined to be vicious he will see to it that 
he always has a club at hand, for even vicious dogs are particularly nice 
to a man who carries a club and brandishes it occasionally. If you say: 
" O, Doctor, that isn't a very nice illustration to apply to human beings! " 
I would remind you of the woman who once said : " The more I see of 
men the more I like dogs ! " and that I am fully within my rights in using 
such an illustration when you remember Shakespeare's reference to " the 
dogs of war," and that I am speaking now of war and not of the society 
for the prevention of cruelty to animals! But to be eminently fair, let 
me apply the illustration to human beings and say that if a man breaks 
into your house you do not sentimentalize with him over the moral wrong 
of his kleptomaniacal proclivities as he tries to brain you, but you 
promptly use the Muldoon treatment, if you have had adequate preparation, 
biff him in the solar plexus and " end it all with a bare " — knock out, if you 
possibly can ! ( Great applause. ) 

Now in this world of ours we have to deal with dogs in human as 
well as animal form, and as St. Paul said, "Beware of dogs! " it is well 
for us to heed the Apostle's warning and be adequately prepared! Senti- 
mentalisni will not do here. We are dealing with the primitive passions 
of man which are " earthly, sensual, devilish," and that can be controlled 
only by force and by a wholesome respect for law that is backed by force. 
Therefore this other group of Pacifists of which I have spoken, in the 
hopeless minority as far as the house of the Pacifists is concerned, but 
backed by the great majority in this practical reasoning world of ours, — 
believes that adequate preparation will bring in the blessings and the vic- 
tories of Peace much sooner and more permanently than the mawkish 
sentimentalism that has been so long employed. At any rate, isn't it fair, 
gentlemen, to at least try it, since the other has proved so disastrous a 
failure? (Applause.) 

Whenever Preparedness is mentioned there rises, of course, that 
Banquo ghost of Prussian Militarism that will not down, but the ghost 
fearers make no distinction between Preparedness for War and Prepared- 
ness against War. " No nation," says the Pacifist, and I am quoting, 
" can speak softly, which carries a big stick." As well say that a father 
cannot speak softly to his child, for he carries the " big stick " of authority 
and discipline, as he is told to by the Lord, and is told not to spare it 



92 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

when necessary lest the child be spoiled. As well say that the Lord cannot 
speak softly to His children because He carries the rod of authority and 
says: "If ye will not for all this hearken unto me then I will punish 
you seven times more for your sins. And I will break the pride of your 
power and I will make your Heaven as iron and your earth as brass." 
(Lev. 26: 18-19.) "Big Stick! " "Big Stick! " It seems to me that the 
Pacifist had better " talk softly " when he talks about the big stick, lest 
men again laugh him out of court! (Great applause.) 

The Pacifist says, and again I quote : " They say that Preparedness 
will avert War, but Germany was prepared, France was prepared, Belgium 
was prepared, England was prepared, and yet there was War! " Here 
again the arrogance and vaulting ambition of the Pacifist has o'erleaped 
itself, fot- he knows, unless he is a fool, that though England was prepared 
as to her navy, she was not prepared as to her army, and had she been, 
he knows there would have been no war. 

For years Lord Roberts, that grand old man of England's military 
history, had been begging Parliament to increase her army. He had 
definitely said he was afraid of German aggression. He warned them 
with prophetic utterance that war would be inevitable unless they in- 
creased their army to something like the power of Germany's forces, but 
all to no avail. The country laughed at him, and I confess that I was 
one who felt that he was unduly anxious, that in his old age he was 
having obsessions and hallucinations, but " little Bobs " before he died 
had the melancholy duty thrust upon him of standing amid the blood 
and sickening welter of the crushed and mangled bodies of England's 
bravest sons, "somewhere in. France," who had paid the penalty of unpre- 
paredness! If England's army had been as well prepared upon the land 
as her na.\j was upon the sea there is not a man with an atom of sense 
but what realizes this awful war would never have been. (Great ap- 
plause.) 

Again, however, the Pacifist rises to remark: "They say that big 
armies are necessary just as life insurance, but the insurance is never 
paid!" Isn't it? Ask France if she paid it in 1870! Ask Germany if 
she isn't using the insurance money collected then for the prosecution of 
her newer plans in this great war! Ask Belgium if she didn't pay when 
Germany levied upon Brussels, Antwerp and other large cities that still 
had gold within their coffers ! Ask Germany again how many millions 
insurance she drew out of bleeding Belgium, not in blood and tears but in 
good, hard cash, and then " go way back and sit down " when you say 
the insurance is never paid! (Applause.) 

Once more from the tombs a doleful voice as the Pacifist cries : " The 
man is abroad asking the question, 'Do you believe in a police force?' 
The answer of the Pacifist is ' yes.' " Then if you do, Mr. Pacifist, you 
have yielded the whole question of Peace through preparation against War, 
for that is all that this nation wants today, an adequate police force, not 
to wage war, but to keep the peace. But the Pacifist cries: "A police 
force does not exist to fight another police force. New York does not pit 
her police force against the police force of Boston." No, but she would 
if the police force of Boston came to New York to try to turn our police 
force out! There would be a nice little fight on, then you may be sure, 
and " owld Oireland " would give a good account of herself in her so-long 
unusurped place in New York City's Government! "Nor does the New 
York State Militia," and again I quote, "pit itself against that of Con- 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 93 

necticut or New Jersey! " No, but she would very quickly if Connecticut 
or New Jersey rose in rebellion as did the Southern States against the 
Northern ones in 1861. Your arguments are as empty as a belfry, Mr. 
Pacifist, save for the bats, and they always roost in vacant places! You 
are hoist on your own petard! (Laughter and applause.) 

But still further says our Pacifist: "We must free ourselves from the 
wizardry of military and naval experts. They are the last men in the 
world to act as safe counsellors of nations." Well, if thai» is so, we 
ministers must step down from our pulpits and let people who know 
nothing about preaching preach. The business man must give up his 
business and let those who know nothing about it run it for him. The 
la^vyer must get out of his office and let a half-baked fool from Mat- 
teawan prepare his briefs. The man who knows most about his business 
is proven by that fact to be less capable of running it, so let us address 
ourselves to the things that we know nothing about and all will go 
merry as a wedding bell! Strange sentiments these, are they not? But 
every one has been literally quoted from the fulminations of the Pacifists 
as they have appeared from time to time. (Applause.) 

The whole trouble with the Pacifist is this intellectual arrogance of 
which I have already spoken, which has, alas, so little basis — in fact, when 
the Bertillon system is applied for his intellectual measurements! He 
knows more about war than Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and 
Napoleon all rolled in one! He knows more about naval affairs than John 
Paul Jones, Lord Nelson, Admiral Dewey and the whole naval college! 
He knows more about theology than Thomas Aquinas, Tom Hall, Lyman 
Beecher, and Lyman Abbott all put together! He knows more about 
statesmanship than Lord John Eussell, Pitt the Elder, Pitt the Younger, 
Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, even if the combined wisdom of 
these mighty sons of Anak were poured into one Gargantuan cranium 
and dared to talk against him! Know? Why Hamlet would never have 
dared to say to him as he said to Horatio: 

" There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamed of in j'our philosophy." 

for he knows it all! (Laughter and applause.) 

One other thing I would say before I finish with the Pacifists, for 
these be parlous times indeed if we cannot speak our mind against such 
things as we feel detrimental and inimical to our country's welfare. 
" Look at the United States," he says, " spanning a continent, guarded on 
the East and West by God's two greatest oceans." This is the nearest, 
by the way, that I have ever heard a Pacifist come to a genuine, simon- 
pure. Fourth of July, spread-eagle speech! Yes, look at the United States! 
Too long we have talked of these 3,000 miles of ocean on the East and 
8,000 miles on the West as thovigh this gave us security and all was 
well. Do you know, Mr. Pacifist, that according to the actual transport 
facilities already at hand in these other nations, Russia can land on the 
coast of this country, 40,000 men within twenty days? Austria-Hungary, 
75,000 men within fifteen days? Japan, 95,000 within twenty-two days? 
France 170,000 within eighteen days? Germany, 400,000 within fifteen 
days? and Great Britain, 665,000 within fifteen days, if she had the men 
on hand as she has now? These are not guess figures, remember, but the 
application of pure mathematics based upon the transport service that 
these nations already possess. (Applause.) 



94 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

But the Pacifist says: "Where would our navy be meanwhile?" 
Well, it would be undoubtedly searching for the enemy, as the enemy 
would be searching for it, but the enemy on finding it would have guns of 
a fifteen- and seventeen-mile range that could destroy the whole of our fleet 
before it got within range with its own smaller guns. " Where, though," 
the Pacifist still cries, " would be our shore batteries protecting our great 
coast line?" Well, they would be ready for work just as soon as the 
enemies' ships came within range, but since they have only an eight-mile 
range and the enemies' ships would have at least a fifteen-mile range, you 
can easily see how our shore batteries and forts would be put out of com- 
mission before a single shot of theirs could take eff"ect. " Then," the 
Pacifist cries, " where would be our army of unbeatable Americans ? " 
Well, the 30,000, which is all that we could muster in any one point, 
together with say another 30,000 of militia, would be lined up on the 
shore waiting for the approach of that enemy, and if they dared to make 
a single hostile move, those same great guns would mow them down like 
wheat before a giant reaper, while the hostile troops were disembarking 
to finish the awful bloody massacre. 

You see now how I have smoked the Pacifist out. By his own admis- 
sion he feels there must be something to stop invasion which he realizes, 
with us, is possible. If this be admitted, then it's only a question of 
means. He thinks the ocean will do it, we have shown it will not. What 
then will do it, and how can we have the blessings of Peace assured to usT 
My answer is that we can only have them through an adequate army and 
na\'y fully drilled and plentifully armed. (Great applause.) 

Figures seem foolish today after so many repetitions of them, but 
though we are the largest great power in the world today in regard to 
territory except Russia, with the largest coast of all natio is, we have 
the smallest army and only the third largest navy, with France and Japan 
rapidly crowding us into fifth place. With an adequate navy it might 
be possible for us to repel invasion by our fleet, but when we think of 
our vast coast line and our Island possessions 8,000 miles away, where 
part of our fleet must always be kept, when we think of the 
Pacific that must always be patrolled, or the Atlantic in the same 
way, with a Pacific invasion, it reduces what we have at least one-half. 
When we also think of our guns outranged both on our ships and in our 
coast fortifications, it reduces our chance of repelling the invader to an 
irreducible minimum, as we couldn't well have less and claim that we 
had any at all. The strength of our na\y in ships is 15 dreadnaughts, as 
opposed to 46 in England, 28 in Germany, with Russia and France owning 
11 and 12 respectively, and Japan and Italy 10 each. Many of these 
ships, remember too, outrange all our guns both on our ships and in our 
coast fortifications, so that it would be possible for a battle cruiser of 
the Queen Elizabeth type, of which England has four, to bombard us 
and actually destroy all New York at a fifteen mile range, while the most 
powerful guns we have at Sandy Hook, Fort Hamilton and Fort Wads- 
worth, have only an eight-mile range, with our ship's guns of correspond- 
ingly small calibre and power. 

Our army, as compared with that of other nations, makes an infinitely 
worse showing, having only 93,000 men with but 48,000 available for 
United States service as compared with the peace footings of Russia with 
1,200,000 men; Germany, 830,000; France, 750,000; Austria-Hungary, 
424,000; Italy, 300,000; Great Britain, 250,000, and Japan, 225,000. Our 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 95 

equipment as to field artillery is also the smallest, the United States 
having but 834 guns, as opposed to Russia with 6,000; Germany, 5,000; 
France, 4,800; Austria, 2,365; Italy, 1,500; Japan, 1,250, and England, 
1,000. 

As to submarines and aeroplanes, we have 58 of the former as opposed 
to almost 300 on the part of England and Germany, though the exact 
figures have not been made known. For aeroplanes we have more definite 
figures, which are: Belgium, 100; Austria and England, 400 each; Russia, 
800; Germany, 1,000; France, 1,400; while America, the home of the 
Wright Brothers, where the aeroplane was invented and perfected, has the 
enormous sum of 23 aeroplanes — and they are not all in working con- 
dition ! ( Laughter. ) 

What Jacob then has stolen in and taken away our birthright? By 
what sheer stupidity and crass folly have we been brought to such a pass? 
By the frothy vaporings of the disarmament Pacifist largely! By the thick- 
skulled arguments that mere possession of a weapon incites the use of it! 
If such were true, our policemen would be going berserk every day, shooting 
up the towns they are set to guard and shooting down innocent people 
by the thousands, because they have a gun and know how to use it. Bj 
the same sign, I, as peaceful as I am, having a Winchester and knowing 
how to hit the bull's-eye as well as the average man, would be on the 
warpath every day, yet I have never shot a living thing; and hundreds 
of thousands of policemen, though often under great provocation, have 
never drawn their guns except for target practice! (Applause.) 

Away with such sophistries and weak-minded delusions! Away wit! 
them speedily or our country will be taken away from us! We have £ 
duty to perform, a sacred duty to our own, and if we perform it not the 
Lord God .Omnipotent will hold us to a strict account at the last, and 
meanwhile we will be a by-word and a hissing among true red-blooded 
men. " If any provide not for his own and especially for those of his 
own household, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel." 
(1 Tim. 5:8.) If we would take care of our own, if we would be true 
to the trust God has reposed in us as the natural guardians of our loved 
ones, our homes and our native land, we must make adequate provision 
for it, we must have men and ships, arms and munitions, and inspire 
that wholesome respect for authority and power which always safeguards 
peace and keeps all safe within our bordersl (Applause.) 

How then is this to be accomplished? By taxation on the one hand 
and universal military service on the other, that will neither burden us 
with onerous or odious taxes nor with a laige and arrogant military class. 
Surely if Germany with only 60,000,000 population can support an army 
of 830,000, we, with our 100,000,000 population can support an army of 
225,000 without having any fear of Prussian Militarism or a military 
class that would be a menace to the nation. Surely if England can afi"ord 
46 battleships of the latest type with her moderate wealth beside our 
own, we, the richest nation in tile world, can afford the same number 
when we need them, even more than she, with all our thousands of miles 
of coast line and our far-flung Island possessions. Yet it's easier to get 
a million-dollar post office than a torpedo boat — though it costs less! 
It's easier to get a deepened waterway on the Mississippi or Missouri than 
a modern coast defense gun that would shoot far enough to do some 
good! It's easier to get a hundred thousand men to run for office than 
to get an extra hundred thousand voted for our army and navy so much 



96 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

in need of men. If Peace is sweet and liberty is dear, we must get those 
things, liowever, and get them soon or we will lose all we have and be 
buried in profound oblivion. (Applause.) 

Congress then must give men and measures and that right early if 
we are to succeed in holding that of which we are so proud and keep 
America in its present peaceful and secure position. The remedy sug- 
gested as to money is not hard to meet with all our wealth that is piling 
up in such leaps and bounds that the annual increase is four billion 
dollars, while the total wealth of the United States has reached the 
enormous proportion of 130 billion. 

The remedy as to men is not a hard one to solve when we remember 
that by the census of 1910 there were 949,876 men of twenty years of age 
and 889,036 men twenty-one years of age in the United States. Again 
statistics, tell us by the law of averages that we can depend upon at least 
850,000 young men attaining their majority each year and an aggregate 
of many millions being in our public schools and colleges at all times 
between the ages of ten to twenty-one. Now the plan that would seem 
most feasible is to adopt that which has already been adopted in Switzer- 
land and has laid no burden upon the people but has given them, with 
only 3,500,000 population, an army of 470,000 men fully armed and 
drilled and ready at a few hours' notice to mobilize at their country's 
call, though they have practically no standing army whatever. That plan 
is to put universal military training into all schools under competent 
government instructors, to take the boys to summer camps for further 
drill and experience, which shall be obligatory only during their school 
years and part of their vacations, except as the men shall, in their 
vacation period also, spend a few days with the colors so that they may 
be kept in condition. With such a system we could at all times have 
a reserve of a million young men or more fully trained by ten or twelve 
years' drill in their school experience, and a second reserve of millions of 
men who have had the same training in their youth and have kept in 
touch with their military leaders, fulfilling all the easy requirements of 
the plan. This, with a standing army of 225,000, which is the largest 
number suggested by military authorities, and an adequate navy to equal 
that of any navy in the world, would insure peace and preserve prosperity, 
would give our sons the right training, not so much for tear but for peace, 
making them healthier, more manly, more aggressive and better fitted for 
all that life may bring to them in the way of opportunity and preferment. 
Thus will we inspire respect throughout the world, be left unmolested in 
our rights and privileges and enjoy the blessings and victories of a lasting 
Peace, which our own hands and forethought have insured. (Great 
applause.) 

Reply of DR. CARTER to DR. GLADDEN in the Debate on Preparedness 
at the Broadway Tabernacle, Fifty-sixth Street and Broadway, 
Tuesday, February 8th, 1916. 

Mb. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I had expected that Dr. Gladden would use the arguments concerning 
the bias and interest of the military and naval men and the arms and 
munitions manufacturers in the subject of preparedness and wnr because 
of the financial interest involved. I also fully expected him to touch upon 
the expense of the whole matter and the necessary burden of taxation that 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 97 

would be laid upon tlie people as well as to take up as he did the 
religious aspects of the case, the un-Christian nature of war and the 
terrible sacrifice of life, robbing our homes of their noblest sons and the 
motherhood of the race of their most loved children. ." also naturally 
anticipated his peroration as to the blessings of Peace and the need of it 
throughout all the world. Therefore, in my reply, I wish to take up these 
matters and answer them as briefly as possible in the short time that is 
left to me. 

First, as to the matter of the self-interest on the part of th. : military 
and naval men and the arms and munition manufacturers, lei me say 
that it is one of the weakest as well as the most prejudiced ana unfair 
arguments that the Pacifist has ever advanced in this whole controversy. 
To dare to say that men, because they make a profit out of war, would 
therefore plunge whole nations into it without cause, is one of the most 
un-Christian as well as illogical arguments that the world has ever 
heard. ( Applause. ) 

As soon might we say that the undertaker would employ a poisoner, 
a murderer and a thug to increase his business, or that the doctor would 
sow the seeds of disease rather than health among his patients that he 
might profit more by his practice! As I quoted in my opening arguments, 
soldiers themselves, such as Sherman, Grant, Chinese Gordon and many 
others, have always expressed their horror of war, and since these men 
are taking their lives in their own hands in entering war, we certainly 
ought to give them the Christian credit and fraternal trust that they 
are doing it not for personal aggrandizement, but for the good of the 
nation which they love. Arms and munitions manufacturers also, though 
profiting from the dread disease of war, are profiting no more than the 
doctor and the undertaker through the evils of bodily disease in their 
lines of work and are certainly no more to be accused of fratricide, paracide 
and devilish massacre. The one thought is just as illogical as the other 
and I have said unworthy to be placed in the arguments of our Pacifist 
friends. (Loud applause.) 

The question of disinterestedness is again brought up by Dr. Gladden, 
as it is by all the Pacifists when they say that the manufacture of all 
arms and munitions should be taken out of private hands and placed in the 
hands of the Government, but here again history as well as logic proves 
that their arguments are unwarranted. Look back over the history of 
other nations as well as our own, and you will find that wherever these 
things have been taken over entirely by the Government there has been 
less progress than in others and more blunders, resulting ofttimes in great 
accidents and awful loss of life. 

Take as an example the French Government. For over a hundred 
years it has made all of its own gunpowder, though its gun works have 
always been under private capital. The French guns, as we know in the 
present war, are far ahead of those of all the other Allies, and are next 
to those of Germany, which are made also by private enterprise in the 
great Krupp works. Her gunpowder, however, has been under question 
for many years both as to its strength and efficiency as well as to its 
deterioration and decomposition. So mucli is this so that the two battle- 
ships, the Jena and La Liberie that were blown up by spontaneous com- 
bustion in their powder magazines, were lost, according to the claim of 
experts, wholly because of the poor composition of the powder and its 
deterioration. Take the case for and against in our own land and you 



98 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

will find that in all inventions concerning arms and munitions, America, 
through the competition of her private enterprise, has always led the way. 
There is no greater stimulus to any man than the stimulus of necessity 
and the constant grinding greed of competition. This has evolved unnum- 
bered developments and inventions that would never have been brought 
forth if left to Government employees in soft berths and with good fat 
salaries. (Applause.) 

Take now the other side of the shield and wherever there is Govern- 
ment control, see how many millions of dollars have been wasted unneces- 
sarily because of the " pork barrel " methods of all of our Congresses. 

Do you know. Dr. Gladden, that during the last fifteen years we spent 
one billion, six hundred and fifty-six million on our navy, while during the 
same peripd, Germany only spent one billion, one hundred and thirty-seven 
million? In other words, though Germany has a navy almost double the 
size of ours, she spent thirty-one per cent, less money on her navy than 
we did on the smaller equipment which we possess ! Over half a billion 
dollars more was spent by America than Germany to get only about half 
of what they now possess! And why? Merely because of what has been 
called the " pork barrel " method of legislation in America, where every 
congressman and senator insists upon the chance of favoring his o^vn state 
or district in regard to Government jobs, irrespective of the price involved 
and the amount or quality of material furnished. (Applause.) 

Some other interesting figures I would like to give if I had the time. 
As for instance in 1899, $600,000 expended for an absolutely unnecessary 
coaling station in Frenchman's Bay, Maine, which has since been 
dismantled as it was practically unused. Also a dock built at 
Portsmouth Na\'y Yard, Kittery, Maine, at an expense of $1,122,000, 
that afterwards it was found was utterly impossible to use because the 
channel wasn't deep enough for any war vessel to reach that dock! and 
blasting had to be done at an expense of another $745,000. In fifteen 
years, between 1895 and 1910, the improvements, machinery, repairs and 
maintenance of the Portsmouth Navy Yard amounted to $10,857,000, 
although there was another large Navy Yard within seventy miles! 

At Port Royal, S. C., another dock was built because a certain 
southern senator wanted it, at a cost of $450,000, which proved to be 
absolutely useless, but it was not abandoned until $2,275,000 more had 
been expended. So I might keep on multiplying these instances of the 
" pork barrel " method and the absolute waste on the part of Government 
employees, but I think I have given enough to disprove the arguments of 
my worthy opponent and to prove that rather than having greater Gov- 
ernment control for these things, it is absolutely necessary to have some 
of the private personal business methods introduced by which our great 
captains of industry have built up their own business, in order that the 
funds of the nation may not be so outrageously expended for absolutely 
unnecessary things. (Applause.) 

Again I might answer the arguments concerning the greater expense 
involved by saying that since Germany with her great army and navy 
takes less than three per cent, of the actual income of the nation in 
taxation for its maintenance, surely we, with our larger income as the 
richest nation in the world, can afford a taxation that will be practically 
negligible in comparison with our vast resources. Do you know, Dr. 
Gladden, that we spend four times as much on tobacco in this nation 
than we do upon our army and navy, and eight times as much in alcoholic 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 99 

drinks, while we could build three new superdreadnaughts every year with 
the amount that we spend on chewing gum alone? Then, too, let u» 
remember that practically every cent we spend upon our army and navy 
comes back to the people in Avages and prices paid for material, so that 
though the people pay it to the Government in the first place, the Govern- 
ment immediately pays it back to the people again for the things that it 
requires. The great talk against expense, therefore, is merely a visionary 
bug-a-boo raised to frighten the unthinking, that our Pacifist and dis« 
armament friends know is not based on fact. (Great applause.) 

As to the religious question involved and the cry that it is un- 
christian to fight, I have but this to say, that David did not think it 
un-Christian when he cried in the 144th Psalm, " Blessed be the Lord my 
Strength, Who teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight." That 
Moses did not think it un-Christian but that it was directed by the Lord 
when he said in Ex. 15, " The Lord is a Man of War." That Paul did 
not think it un-Christian when he said in the 13th Chapter of Romans 
concerning "the powers that be," that is: present order, authority and 
law, " For he is a minister of God to thee for good, but if thou do that 
which is evil, be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain." That 
Christ did not think it un-Christian when he said in the 22nd Chapter of 
Luke, " And he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy 
one." This latter reference also is very definite and emphatic when we 
remember it was after Christ had first sent out his disciples without 
purse or script as well as without any weapons. Now, therefore, when 
he has come to the last night of his life and is about to send them out 
again with the knowledge of that former experience upon him and them 
he says most significantly, " Now he that hath a purse let him take it 
and likewise his script and he that hath no sword let him sell his garment 
and buy one." And they said, " Lord, behold, here are two swords." And 
He said unto them, "It is enough." (Applause.) 

No Pacifist, certainly, with this passage before him, can twist it a3 
they have tried to twist so many others to a mere figurative meaning. It 
is absolute, literal, definite. The physical swords were there. The dis- 
ciples showed them, the Master saw them, approved of them and said, " It 
is enough." Christ realized, as we all realize, that there must come a 
time, — after we have tried, of course, every other method, — there naturally 
must come a time when we are compelled to stand for our principles and 
show our autliority, law and force. For as I have already quoted from 
the Scripture, " He that provideth not ( or doth not take care ) for his 
own is worse than an infidel and hath denied the faith." (Great applause.) 

The cry as to the sacrifice of our sons and the bitter bereavement of 
wives and mothers is not well taken by the wives and mothers themselves, 
when we remember that just yesterday in an article in the daily press, 
where a canvass had been taken of the parents having children in a 
number of our High Schools in our large cities, it was found that eighty-five 
per cent, of the mothers were in favor of governmental military training, 
that their sons might be prepared to guard these selfsame mothers, their 
homes and native land! It is still less well taken when we remember 
that the Woman's Section of the Belgian Relief Committee that has had 
most intimate knowledge of the horrors of war, have nevertheless sent out 
an appeal for preparedness wherein they say : " Our country is oome to 
the parting of the ways. Her isolation is finished and she must soberly 
choose her place among the nations. Her ideals are essentially those of 



100 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

liberty and peace. How shall we secure them? The plight of Belgium and 
the pride of Switzerland are our answer. He is safe who is prepared, he 
only is free who is master of himself! " (Continued applause.) 

These wives and mothers know that their husbands, sons and brothers 
must fight at last if war shall come and they prefer to give them a 
" fighting chance " through preparation rather than that they should be 
murdered in cold blood. They prefer to have them trained, drilled, devel- 
oped for whatever may come so that they shall not be helpless when 
brought face to face with the enemy and be massacred in what then 
would be the savage butchery of war. (Loud applause.) 

We all believe in Peace just as much as our Pacifist friends, and 
believe indeed that it will come at last, but we believe it will only come 
as other nations are impressed with the strength and determination of 
those with which they are surrounded. Such a show of strength, 
authority and power will make all nations the more ready to join in what 
the poet long has dreamed of : " The Parliament of Man, the Federation 
of the World." (Applause.) 

Such a federation, of course, can only come through mutual agreement. 
That agreement can never come until there is mutual respect for the 
power and principles of the other nations of the world. With such recog- 
nition, respect and agreement, our far-flung navies will be merged in one 
as a police patrol for all the seas or to bear the growing commerce of 
the world; our huge opposing armies will be scattered on the fields of 
industry instead of on the fields of war, and Peace will brood on all our 
borders because order, law, authority and power have made it possible, — 
as the human recognition of God's laio, authority and poioer brings ever- 
lasting Peace to all our hearts. (Loud and continued applause.) 



ANSWERS TO 
ARGUMENTS OF THE PACIFISTS 

I make no comments or criticisms upon any of the statements or 
arguments in the letters of the pacifists printed in this volume, and 
neither do I comment upon the arguments and statements in the letters of 
the martialists and advocates of national defense printed here. I let the 
letters speak for themselves. 

I have, however, republished here some of the most notable articles 
of the most prominent pacifists, published and circulated by them and by 
pacifist organizations, which I do comment upon. 

My object in publishing the arguments of the pacifists in so full and 
complete a manner is to present both sides of the question of national 
defense, with absolute impartiality and fairness. 

In justice to the reader, I feel that it is incumbent upon me to 
present here the case for national defense at such length and with such 
force as to make plain the truths of that side of the question. 

For further information and arguments than I have room to present 
here, I refer the reader to " Defenseless America." 

All the points of difference of opinion between the pacifists and the 
martialists or advocates of national defense — all the points upon which 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 101 

are based the arguments of the pacifists against national defense — may 
be summed up under a few lieads. 1 will, therefore, present these points 
under heads, as nearly as possible in tiie order of their importance. 

HEAD 1. 
IS SELF-DEFENSE RIGHT OR WRONG? 

Taking the Scriptural injunction, " Thou shalt not kill," as a starting 
point of their reasoning, and also taking literally the other Scriptural 
injunction, " Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him 
the other also " as a guide of conduct, they advocate non-resistance to all 
aggressive force. They believe that might does not make right, and by 
consequence that the use of might is wrong, even to accomplish right, or 
to defend the right. If the principle of non-resistance is right, then in all 
human conduct positiveness should be replaced by passiveness, which, car- 
ried to a logical conclusion, implies inertness for action, recession for 
progression, and finally, death for life. 

There are two kinds of pacifists: those who believe in absolute non- 
resistance regardless of the provocation, and those who believe in some 
resistance under certain extreme provocation. 

It is inconceivable to the normal-minded person how anyone could 
possibly believe in non-resistance. As a matter of fact, regardless of 
belief, no one ever did or ever will, or ever could follow such a foolish 
course of conduct. Experience has proved this time after time. 

There are two kinds of minds: those that possess sufficient imagina- 
tion and breadth of understanding to be rational and logical, and those 
that lack sufficient imagination and understanding to think rationally and 
logically. 

It is imagination, more than any other faculty, that distinguishes 
the mind' of the normal man from the mind of the fanatic and of the 
criminal. Imagination is the most distinctively human faculty, and the 
one which, more than any other, distinguishes man from the brute. 

The pacifist who starts out with the premise that " Thou shalt not 
kill," and that it is one's duty to turn the other cheek, may really believe 
such conduct would be actually possible when put to the test; but bring 
a few such pacifists together and restrict them to one another's society 
for a few days, and what happened on the Oscar II is absolutely always 
sure to happen. The dove of peace quickly becomes a turkey buzzard and 
the turn-the-other-cheeker develops the disposition of the hyena. There 
being no possible general agreement in their ideas and opinions, each of 
them, believing in the infallibility of his own ideas and opinions, is 
naturally intolerant of the opposing opinions and ideas of every other. 

Such pacifists, not being able to imagine how anyone could honestly 
differ from them, immediately conclude that those who do differ from 
them are not honest. The result is natural and inevitable that their wind 
of words should blow up a storm of riot at any peace conference between 
them, and that they should resort to fisticuffs, even if to nothing worse, to 
maul into one another the beauties of the doctrine of passiveness and 
non-resistance. 

The normal-7uinded person, on the other hand, is endowed with the 
necessary imagination and breadth of judgment to realize the truth that 
every person must of necessity be a martialist and ready to fight in 



103 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

defense of what blessings belong to him, to have and to hold, and in defense 
of the blessings that are the rights of others to have and to hold, for whom 
he feels a measure of responsibility. 

There is far more Scriptural evidence to justify this attitude of mind 
than that of the extreme pacifist. 

"The Lord is a man of war." (Ex. xv: 3.) 

"The Lord of Hosts is His name." (Is. li: 15.) 

" Blessed be the Lord my strength which teacheth my 
hands to war, and my fingers to fight." (Ps. cxliv: L) 

"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I 
came not to send peace, but a sword." (Matt, x: 34.) 

t "And he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment 
and buy one . . . for the things concerning me have an 
end." (Luke xxii: 36, 37.) 

" Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and 
say unto them: When I bring the sword upon a land, if the 
people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him 
for their watchman: 

" If, when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he 
blow the trumpet and warn the people; 

" Then, whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet and 
taketh not warning; if the sword come and take him away, 
his blood shall be upon his own head. 

" He heard the sound of the trumpet and took not warn- 
ing, his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning 
shall deliver his soul. 

" But if the watchman see the sword come and blow not 
the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword 
come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away 
in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman's 
hand." (Ezek. xxxiii: 4, 5, 6.) 

" For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But 
if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not 
the sword in vain; for he is the minister of God, a revenger 
to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." (Rom. xiii: 4.) 

Preaching on Christ's teachings on force and preparedness, February 
27, 191G, Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, pastor of Plymouth Church, took for 
his text, Luke xi: 21: 

" When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods 
are in peace; but when a stronger than he shall come upon 
him and overcome hira, he taketh from him all his armor 
wherein he trusted and divideth his spoils." 

Dr. Hillis said: 

" Jesus recognized, in His teachings, the doctrine of force 
in the face of anarchy, with its attendant lawlessness. It is 
quite true that Jesus taught the doctrine of non-resistance 
and of forgiveness to one's enemies. It is also true that men 
like Tolstoi have built up upon these fragmentary statements 
a grotesque concatenation of absurdities. Did the Russian 
peasant sow the seed and reap the grain, only to have a 
tramp loot the storehouse ? Did the husbandman plant the vine 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 103 

and prune the bough, to find that another hand had stolen the 
clusters? Did the merchant manufacture the goods and put 
the cloth upon the shelf for sale, only to have the thief in 
the night despoil him of his treasure? Tolstoi straightway 
answers: 'Do not resist. And the moral splendor, soon or 
late, will shame the thief and tramp.' But all this is sheer 
anarchy. Men will not build if an enemy is to sit by the 
fire. Men will not sow and reap if their own children are to 
starve. Tolstoi would do away with the lock on the door, the 
bar on the bank, the policeman in the street, the jail in the 
city. Nothing is gained by throwing down the bars and letting 
the wild beast loose. . . . 

" Jesus affirmed the doctrine of force against every form 
of lawlessness." 

Let me refer the reader here to Chapter II of " Defenseless America," 
especially to pages 42 to 55, and to Dr. Carter's speech, " The Necessity 
of Preparedness," printed in this volume. 

The history of the ancient world was one continuous orgy of fire and 
aword, blood and murder. Banditry was the only honorable profession, 
and it is a curious fact that the more powerful and wicked and mur- 
derous one of the old bandit kings was the more he became an advocate of 
non-resistance. 

All the red-handed old royal rascals from Rameses and before, down 
to Attila, Genghis Khan, Timur the Tartar, were staunch advocates of 
non-resistance, and when their advice was not taken or their will was 
disobeyed they were also as intolerant and unreasonable as the modern 
pacifist. 

Their method was to approach the walled city of a neighboring nation 
and demand its surrender, in other words, to advocate non-resistance on 
the part of its inhabitants. If the inhabitants of the besieged city imme- 
diately opened its gates, the bandit king was sometimes kind, considerate 
and generous enough to spare their lives, merely taking all their property 
and selling them into slavery. 

If, on the contrary, the inhabitants did not take the pacifist advice 
of the bandit king, but kept their gates closed and manned their walls, 
a regular siege was instituted by the beleaguerers, and if and when the 
city fell what the old king bandit did to the inhabitants to emphasize 
the excellence of his advice about non-resistance was a shame to human 
nature. 

Let me cite one example. During a period of five hundred years all 
Assyrian kings were on the warpath. The historian states: — 

" Apparently it was quite impossible for an Assyrian king 
to be a peaceful sovereign. His State lived by and for the 
armj- alone, and if he did not give the army successful em- 
ployment he was quickly murdered to make way for some- 
one who would lead the troops to conquest and plunder." 

Let me introduce to you, dear reader, one veritable old jewel as an 
Assyrian conqueror. His name was Ashur-natsir-pal III, 

"... whose magnificent palace at Kalah, with its 
alabaster slabs exquisitely carved in relief, was excavated by 
Layard in the forties of last century. The slabs are now one 



104 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

of the glories of the British Museum, -where also the statue 
of the great conqueror stands. 

"We have the record of eighteen years of his reign: there 
is scarcely a year in which he was not at war; and this is 
the kind of war he made: 

* " ' To the city of Tela I approached. The city was very 
strong; three fortress-walls surrounded it. The inhabitants 
trusted to their strong walls and their numerous army; they 
did not come down or embrace my feet. With battle and 
slaughter I attacked the city and captured it. Three thou- 
sand of their fighting men I slew with the sword; their 
spoil, their goods, their oxen, and their sheep I carried away; 
many captives I burned with fire. 

' "'I captured many of their soldiers alive; I cut off the 
hands and feet of some ; of others I cut off the noses, the ears, 
and the fingers; I put out the eyes of many soldiers. I 
built up a pyramid of the living and a pyramid of heads. On 
high I hung up their heads on trees in the neighborhood of 
their city. Their young men and their maidens I burned with 
fire. The city I overthrew, dug it up, and burned it with 
fire; I annihilated it.'" 

What a pal must have been this old Ashur-natsir-pal. 

Any philosophy opposed to natural law may be kno\Aii to be a false 
philosophy, and any rule of conduct opposed to all human experience may 
be known to be opposed to natural law, for all animal life and experience 
must of necessity conform to natural law. 

In order to put into practice the doctrine of non-resistance it would 
be necessary to reverse the natural law that secures the survival of the 
fittest. 

Life is a constant struggle for existence. It is a struggle against 
opposing forces; and all growth, development, health and progress depend 
entirely upon successful resistance to environing forces which tend to 
consume us, but which, through our powers of resistance, we are enabled 
to use formatively to develop and strengthen us. The martialist, there- 
fore, obeys the law of life, while the pacifist, without knowing or under- 
standing the nature of his own teaching, advocates living by the law of 
death. If it be wTong to kill, it is also wrong to be killed. The Scriptural 
injunction " Thou shalt not kill " necessarily implies — thou shalt not be 
killed, and that one should take the necessary measures of defense to 
prevent being killed. 

When one person is in danger of being killed by another, and knows 
that he is in such danger and takes no measures for self-defense, he 
becomes an accessory to the murder. 

The truth must be recognized that good as well as evil is a force. 
We often speak of a person or thing being a power for good. 

The Bible is filled with metaphors illustrative of the truth that good 
is in constant warfare with evil, righteousness with iniquity, angels with 
the Devil. Milton's "Paradise Lost" and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" 
are two wonderful metaphors or allegories of the warfare of good against 
evil. 

We also have in our own time that marvelous metaphor of good 
warfare against evil — the Salvation Army. 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 105 

HEAD 2 
QUESTION OF SUBSTITUTION OF LAW FOR WAR 

The pacifists advocate the substitution of international law for war, 
as they put it, and the settlement of international disputes by juris- 
prudential procedure. They fail absolutely to understand the fact that 
law being a representative of force, any law without force behind it 
would not be true law, but would be merely advice. 

The extreme pacifists imagine that they will be able to do away with 
force and compel obedience to international law by the substitution of 
love and persuasion for force. 

Law without force behind it is like a paper dollar without gold 
behind it. 

I refer the reader to Chapter II of " Defenseless America." 

HEAt) 3 
OLD MARS BOTH A DR. JEKYLL AND A MR. HYDE 

The pacifists believe that by proving war to be wrong, they prove all 
military preparations to be essentially wrong. They draw lurid pictures 
of the horrors of war, imagining that they thereby prove all wars to be 
wrong. They fail to perceive the truth that there are both good wars and 
bad wars. 

The fact is old Mars has a dual personality. He is both a Dr. Jekyll 
and a Mr. Hyde. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and General Grant 
were soldiers who fought in the cause of the good Mars. When one fights 
in defense of his home and country, when one fights to free slaves, when 
one fights against tyranny, aggression and oppression — in short, when one 
fights for freedom, he is fighting a good war. On the other hand, those 
who wage wars of aggression and oppression — wars whose objects are to 
plunder and enslave — are fighting bad wars; in short, all wars against 
aggression and for freedom are good wars, while all wars of aggression 
and against freedom are bad wars. 

It is the supreme of patriotism and the worthiest of sacrifice to fight 
for and die for one's country in a war against aggression, and, on the 
other hand, it is the supreme of the ignoble and the infamous to fight 
and die in a war of aggression and oppression, in a war of banditry. The 
noblest of all professions is the profession of the soldier fighting in the 
cause of righteousness, and the most dishonorable of all professions is that 
of the soldier of unrighteousness, the soldier of banditry. 

HEAD 4 

RIVALRY OF PREPAREDNESS AMONG NATIONS 

The pacifists hold that preparation by one country for national defense 
leads other countries to prepare likewise. They claim that such prepara- 
tion is not a safeguard against war, but an enticement to war; that the 
very act of preparing has in it the nature of a threat, and constitutes a 
menace; furthermore, that preparation by one nation starts a rivalry 
between all the nations, and that the more one nation prepares, the more 



106 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

all the others are sure to prepare, thereby piling upon the taxpayers 
enormous expense, without any end to it. 

One of the prettiest bits of sophistry under this head is that of Mr. 
Bryan, in his speech, " The War in Europe," printed in this volume, where 
he represents three neighbors living around a lake engaging in a rivalry 
of battleship construction to defend themselves against one another. 

Mr. Bryan failed to perceive the truth that three families so situated, 
under such primitive and lawless conditions as he assumes, would of 
necessity. adopt exactly those measures that mankind has always adopted 
under similar circumstances. 

Let us go back a little in human history to the time when there were 
three families of cave men living around a lake, and see what those cave 
men did do, When one family of the cave men made hatchets and spear- 
heads of flint and bone, the other families also had to make them for 
self-defense; and when one family invented the bow and arrow, and was 
able to kill a neighbor at a distance beyond the throw of the javelin, the 
bow and arrow was necessarily adopted by the other two families; and 
when one family, with fire and flint hollowed a log, and made a boat or 
constructed a raft of logs, the other families had to have their raft and 
their boat; and when they came out of their caverns and built their houses 
on the shore of the lake, and the members of one family or community 
surrounded their houses by a common wall, the other families around the 
lake did likewise, and, still later, when bronze replaced flint, each family 
had to have bronze weapons, and when steel replaced bronze they had to 
have weapons of steel; and, finally, with the advent of firearms and gun- 
boats, each family or community or city or nation had to have its firearms 
and its gunboats. In short, exactly in pace and in keeping with their 
intellectual development and their powers of invention, have the people 
of the world been compelled by necessity to adopt the best available means 
of defense. 

This rivalry has not been a bad thing. It has been a good thing. 
Nothing could so stimulate the mind of man to invention and discovery 
as the imperative and ever-present necessity of providing himself weapons 
for the defense of his home and property against those who always stood 
ready to take them from him and to enslave him if he did not defend them ; 
and always the measure of such preparation for defense has been propor- 
tionate to what at the time appeared to be the need for it. When the need 
was greater, there was always greater preparation, and when the need was 
less, there was less precaution and less preparation; and always also the 
necessity for preparation has been exactly proportionate to the prospective 
dividends that might be declared after deducting the cost of conquest. 

No nation has ever been safe except when it has been so well defended 
as to make it evident that the cost of conquest would exceed the plunder, 
and whenever it has been evident that the cost of conquest would exceed the 
plunder, any nation was safe. 

All families, all communities, all nations, have grown up from the 
simple beginning of the cave-man family. 

When the three cave-men families became three nations, living on 
opposite shores of a lake or on opposite sides of a river or a mountain 
chain, or on the opposite sides of a thicket or jungle, they were rivals, 
and were enemies whenever advantage or necessity dictated that they 
should be enemies, and when they met and fought with their primitive 
weapons the slaughter was immense, and the slaughter continued to in- 
crease with improvements in weapons of war until the maximum was 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 107 

reached with the Roman short sword. Since that time, especially since 
the advent of firearms, which compelled armies to line up farther apart 
and to spread over wider areas, fewer and fewer have been killed with 
every improvement in the length of range and speed of fire of guns. 

Consequently, when the three families in Mr. Bryan's simile of three 
nations arrived at the point when they built rival battleships, they were 
pitting dollars against dollars, rather than pitting their lives against one 
another, as they used to do in the old days before there were battleships. 

The reader is referred to Chapter IV of " Defenseless America " for 
further matter upon this subject. 

The question is often raised by the pacifists, where does adequate 
preparedness end? If we arm, then other nations will arm all the more, 
and then we shall be required to take on a still larger burden to hold our 
position with respect to the other nations, and there will never be an 
end to it. 

When we look at this sophistry of the pacifists, we are inclined to 
think that there is some reason in their argument, but on second thought 
we see that their contention is very illogical. There is a definite limit to 
the amount any nation should prepare in order to make itself perfectly 
safe. 

Nations do not go into the business of war except for profit, any 
more than business men enter business without prospective profit. No 
man will go into a business knowing beforehand that he is going to lose 
money in the enterprise. Similarly, no nation will go to war with another 
nation unless the prospective plunder is likely greatly to exceed the cost 
of plundering. 

One of the best illustrations of the truth that adequacy of preparedness 
means preparedness up to the point where the plunder does not warrant 
the expense of plundering, is afforded by the experience of the Swiss just 
after the Franco-Prussian War. 

Bismarck, after that war, looked with covetous eyes upon the Swiss 
fastnesses, and he straightway planned to take possession of Switzerland 
and bring it into the German Empire. But the Swiss at that time had 
a hundred thousand of the best-armed, best-trained soldiers in the world, 
and a goodly number besides not quite up to that standard. They marched 
this hundred thousand men down to the frontier, and Bismarck was con- 
vinced that the cost of taking Switzerland would be more than it would 
be worth. 

A rabbit in the wood that should decide to substitute the quills of 
the porcupine for its protection in place of high speed to escape its 
enemies, would have to be armed with quills long enough, numerous 
enough and sharp enough to make the cost of getting at its flesh more 
than its flesh would be worth, even to its hungriest and most fiercely- 
fanged enemies. 

Similarly, it is not the relative size of the fleet of Germany, or of 
any other nation, that should determine the size of our fleet, for always 
there is a possibility that the fleets of other nations may double up against 
us. WTiat we need, and all we need, is a fleet big enough, together with 
an army big enough, to make the cost of whipping us more than the 
plunder would be worth — in short, to make the cost of getting at our 
flesh more than the profit in getting at our flesh would be worth. 

Here lies the answer to the argument of the pacifists that if we 
were to prepare sufficiently to defend ourselves against the great military 



108 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

nations of the world, we should also become a military despotism — we 
should become aggressors and attack and plunder other nations. 

We surely should be dominated by our myriad-year-old human nature, 
and should do some plundering of the weaker nations who had not made 
hedgehogs of themselves by so adequately preparing against war as to 
make the cost of getting at their meat through their quills more than it 
would be worth. 

This has always been the way of the world. During all history 
warlike nations have imposed upon unwarlike nations. Poor old China 
had to shave its head and wear a pigtajl for a thousand years. 

The time has come for us to choose whether or not we shall submit 
to degradation by other nations or arm ourselves and trust ourselves not 
to abuse our power. Of the two evils it strikes me that the lesser evil 
would be to abuse the other fellow rather than to put ourselves in a 
position to let him abuse us. 

The present war has proved that there are still predatory nations in 
the world; that these predatory nations are better armed than we are; 
that they do not respect either treaties or the rights of other nations, 
but are actuated solely by what they consider advantageous to themselves. 

If we remain unarmed our undefended wealth will be an enticement 
to the predatory powers. Consequently, it is up to us now to decide 
whether or not we can trust ourselves to carry arms wthout becoming 
ourselves predatory, or whether we shall take the risk of becoming a 
predatory nation rather than take the risk of being victimized by preda- 
tory nations. 

If it be actually true that if we were adequately armed for national 
defense we should be tempted to use our arms against other nations not 
so well prepared as we, this is the strongest possible evidence that if we 
do not prepare, then those nations that are now better armed than we, 
will attack us if we do not prepare for defense. 



HEAD 5 
MERCIFUL WEAPONS OF WAR 

The pacifists hold that whereas it is wrong to kill, it is likewise 
wrong to invent or make munitions of war intended to kill; also that 
the more deadly and destructive a weapon of war is, so much greater 
is the wrong in making it. 

The pacifists believe also that the more deadly and destructive is an 
implement of war, the larger the number of persons that may be killed 
by it, while the exact opposite is the truth. 

The quick-firing gun is the greatest life-saving instrument ever in- 
vented, because with eveiy improvement in the range and rapidity of fire 
of guns, armies fight just so much farther apart as may be necessary to 
balance its added effectiveness. 

Before the introduction of firearms, fighting was done at short range, 
and was correspondingly more deadly. Many times as many men, for 
the numbers engaged, were killed in wars with spears, battleaxes and 
the short sword as are now killed in battle with all our modern enginery 
of death and destruction. With the introduction of improved machinery 
of war, fighting is necessarily done more by machinery and less by hand, 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 109 

so that in battle life-destroying machinery becomes labor-saving machinery, 
and consequently life-saving machinery. 

History proves that the supreme necessity of a nation has always been 
interpreted by that nation as its supreme duty, and that a nation is sure 
to take advantage of whatever appears to be of supreme advantage to it, 
and that if it cannot get it without fighting for it, it is sure to fight for it. 

Whatever may be the ethical standards of a people, and however much 
their ideals may be opposed to the doctrine of might makes right, they 
always in their conduct put the doctrine of might makes right into 
practice. They always exercise might to accomplish what they believe to 
be right, and they conceive to be right always what is best for themselves. 
They justify themselves on the ground that their very possession of the 
power to accomplish their designs is prima facie evidence that they are 
the special favorites of Providence, and the fittest to survive, and conse- 
quently warranted in the exercise of force to get what they want at 
whatever cost or loss it may be to others, and regardless of whatever 
sacrifice of life may be necessary to its accomplishment, especially when 
the loss of life is mainly on the part of the parties plundered. 

Therefore, taking the human fighting instinct as a constant or unvary- 
ing propensity or characteristic, nations are sure to fight when the con- 
ditions above referred to favor a fight, and they will fight with whatever 
weapons they have, and the simpler and more primitive the weapons are, 
the greater the slaughter. Therefore, if all the nations of the world were 
to disarm and actually to forge their swords into plowshares, and their 
spears into pruning hooks, and to scrap all their guns and other imple- 
ments of war, that very act would arm them with far more deadly 
weapons than they now possess. The pruning hook would be a far more 
deadly weapon than the quick-firing gun, to say nothing of the farmers' ax 
and pitchfork. 

Had the vast armies of Europe in the present war been armed with 
only agricultural implements, the actual slaughter would have been ten 
times as great for the time and numbers engaged. Therefore, disarma- 
ment would not be a measure in the interest of saving life — it would be 
a measure that would, in the event of war, result in enormously increased 
sacrifice of life. 

The reader is referred, for further information under this head, to 
" Defenseless America," Chapter IV. 

HEAD 6 
PREPAREDNESS AN INSURANCE AGAINST WAR 

The pacifists hold that the munition makers are largely to blame tor 
war, because they work for preparedness or national defense, in order to 
sell more munitions of war. Therefore, they hold that if the profit for 
the munition makers were taken out of war, that is to say, if they were 
prevented from making profits from war, there would as a result be no 
preparedness and no wars. 

They do not observe the point that peace, according to their reasonings, 
could not be made permanent, even Avith the ruse of turning the other 
cheek and the obligation of brotherly love, unless there shovild be an inter- 
national agreement among munition makers, because if the munition 
makers of one country continued to advocate preparedness and thereby 



110 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

to promote war, they would promote war all the more the easier it could 
be precipitated, and the less that other nations were prepared the easier 
it would be for them to make war, and consequently to make profits. 

HEAD 7 
REGARDING THE REAL DANGER OF WAR 

Before the great European War came, the pacifists held that the 
last great war of the world had been fought; that, owing to the ponderous 
preparedness of the nations and the evident expense of a war. none of them 
would dare to precipitate war — that they would see beforehand that the 
expense would bankrupt them and the slaughter would be so frightful as 
to depopulate them. 

Nevertheless, the great war came, and the expense, though vast, has 
not bankrupted the nations — in fact, the annual outlay has not been five 
per cent, of the wealth of the warring powers, while the annual death rate 
has not by any means equalled the birth rate. 

Now that the war has actually come, the pacifists, in accounting for 
it, say that it was brought on as a result of the ponderous preparedness of 
the nations for war, exactly the same reasons that they used before the 
war to prove that this war could not come. 

It is not at all true that the European powers were ponderously pre- 
pared. Germany and Austria were the only countries that were prepared. 
France was only partially prepared; both Russia and England were piti- 
fully unprepared. 

Under this head, the reader is referred to " Defenseless America," 
Chapter I. 

HEAD 8 

MUNITION MAKERS AND ARMY AND NAVY OFFICERS AS WAR 

BREEDERS 

Under this head, the reader is referred for particulars to Chapter XI 
of " Defenseless America." 

HEAD 9 

THE SIMILE OF THE DUELIST 

A very favorite sophistical simile used by the pacifists is that until 
recent years dueling was a customary method of settling individual difi'er- 
ences — that when some dishonorable fellow skillful in the use of sword 
or gun wanted to get square with some honorable opponent who had 
aspersed the rascal's honor, the rascal would send the honorable man a 
challenge, which he was obliged to accept or become the laughing-stock 
and ridicule of and a thing to be shunned by all his fellow creatures. 

The pacifists tell us that when one nation arms to defend itself for 
defense against another nation, it is a case exactly parallel with the 
duelist who used to carry a gun to defend his honor, and that whereas 
dueling has become unpopular and a discarded thing, national defense 
should also become unpopular and be discarded. 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 111 

That simile is very convincing when one accepts it as an argument 
without question, but it does not stand investigation. The case of the 
armed nation is not at all similar to that of the armed duelist. But let 
me give a simile which will actually illustrate the position of two nations 
with respect to their measures of defense, under the following head. 

HEAD 10 

NEED OF POLICE 

Salus populi suprema lex. (The safety of the people is the supreme 
law.) 

" The police power is an attribute of sovereignty and 
exists without any reservation in the constitution, being 
founded upon the duty of the state to protect its citizens, 
and provide for the safety and good order of society. It 
corresponds to the right of self-preservation in the individual, 
and is an essential element in all orderly government, because 
necessary to the proper maintenance of the government and the 
general welfare of the community. Upon it depend the security 
of social order, the life and health of the citizen, the comfort 
of existence in a thickly populated community, the enjoyment 
of private and social life, and the beneficial use of property, 
and it has been said to be the very foundation upon which 
our social system rests." ("A. and E. Ency. of Law.") 

Much has been said in recent years upon the subject of an interna- 
tional police force — that is to say, a union of the armed forces of the 
nations for compulsory international good behavior — an armed force on 
a large scale identical in nature with what the municipal police force is 
on a small scale. 

I do not know for certain who was the first to recommend an interna- 
tional armed police force. At any rate, I never heard of it having been 
suggested prior to its recommendation by me about twenty-five years ago, 
or even prior to its recommendation by me at a Peace Congress Banquet 
of the Economic Club of Boston on the 20th day of April, 1907. 

It is a scientific truism that multiplying the number of a thing does 
not alter the nature of the thing. An apple is an apple, whether one 
apple or a million are under consideration, and the same holds true in 
all things, from mustard seed to man. The same laws govern a million 
mustard seeds that govern one mustard seed, and the same laws are 
applicable to a million families of men as are applicable to one family of 
men. 

A community is but a larger family, a state is but a larger com- 
munity, and any number of states is but a larger state. The state or 
nation itself is but a larger family; and the same natural laws of 
behavior and self-preservation hold true with any number of individuals 
and with any number of families as with a single individual or a single 
family, and the same natural laws apply to a complex society as to a 
simple form of society. 

The father of the family and his strong boys were the police force 
that guarded the family of the cave man, and the cave man community 



112 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

was policed by a union of the male heads of families — by a union of the 
family guardians. 

Later, when the cave man moved from the hill cavern down into the 
valley, and settled on the banks of lakes and rivers, and protected his 
community with a wall, the army that he raised to defend his city was 
a police force that protected it both from witliout and from within. 

The first army was raised purely for protective purposes, but when 
the police force of one city or community became much stronger than that 
of a neighboring city or community, the greater power was often abused, 
and the stronger city plundered the weaker city and enslaved its inhab- 
itants. This was an abuse of police power. 

At the present time an army and a navy of a people like that of the 
United States is purely a police force, and has no other function than 
as a police force. The people of this country have no desire for foreign 
aggression. There could be no profit to this country from foreign ag- 
gression, and that is the strongest reason in the world based upon the 
experiential knowledge of all history for the belief that the people of this 
country would not abuse their power if armed sufficiently for self-defense. 

There is absolutely no diff"erence, except in size, between an invasion 
of a country by a foreign foe and the invasion of a private home by a band 
of thieves. 

We are guarded in our cities from the attack of thieves by our police. 
An army and a navy purely to prevent attacks of a foreign enemy is in 
every sense a police force. The conquest of a home by thieves and the 
slaying of the members of a family who die in defense of their home is 
merely a war of invasion on a small scale, and a war of invasion of a 
nation is merely a home invasion by thieves and plunderers on a large 
scale. It simply means that a larger number of homes suffer and that 
the number of thieves and plunderers is larger. There is absolutely no 
difference whatever in the nature or the ethics of the two transactions. 
Consequently, we have the same reason to support our arguments for 
preparedness against invasion of this country by a foreign foe as for a 
police force for the defense of our homes against thieves and burglars. 

A truth that has been established by the experience of all history may 
safely be relied on, and it is a truth so established that the treatment of 
undefended nations by warlike nations has always been as inconsiderate, 
unethical and merciless as the treatment of a family by a gang of thieves. 
When a nation is rich and unprotected, other nations that have guns and 
the equipment of men and munitions for its conquest are just as likely to 
invade and plunder the weak nation as a gang of well-armed thieves 
would be likely to invade and rob an unprotected rich family in any city 
in the country, if that city had no police force, and thieves and cutthroats 
were permitted to go about unarrested and unmolested. 

Those pacifists who recommend that this country go unprepared 
should first try the experiment on a small scale. Let some city in the 
Union, the majority of whose voters are pacifists, disband their police 
force and see how the thing will work on a small scale before trying it on 
a large scale with the entire country. 

Let us suppose, for example, that a city like Chicago, St. Louis, 
Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, should disband its police 
force, and depend for its security entirely upon the innate spirit of good 
fellowship and brotherly love of its citizens. How would it work out? 
Chaos would reign in a day! Thieves, cutthroats and burglars would 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 113 

immediately rise up in large numbers. No life would be safe and no home 
secure for a moment. No property would be safe anywhere. Stores would 
be broken into indiscriminately and plundered. 

We are so dependent upon our police force for our security that we 
have come to look upon it as an absolute indispensable adjunct of every 
society where large numbers of people are congregated. No one would for 
a moment think of doing away with our policemen. Thvis, we are able 
to see in a small and simple way why we should defend the country in 
a larger way. Consequently, it is most evident that we should have a large 
police force to defend the nation just as we have a small police force to 
defend the persons and property of the inhabitants of our cities. 

HEAD 11 

OUR COUNTRY'S DANGER. OUR ISOLATION NO LONGER A 
PROTECTION 

The pacifists claim that all the other nations are friendly to us. 

" No nation has any thought of waging war against us. 
. . . No nation is challenging us ; no nation is trying to 
draw us into war with itself." — William Jennings Bryan. 

" We are connected so intimately by ties of blood and 
sympathy with all the nations of the Old World that public 
opinion wovild make a war with any of the great powers prac- 
tically impossible." — Memorial to Memhers of Senate and 
House from Society of Friends of Pennsylvania, Neio Jersey, 
Delaware and parts of Maryland. 

" Let the President and others who are preaching this 
doctrine of fear point out the enemy. . . ." — Henry Ford. 

" Who is this invisible, this unknown, this unheralded 
enemy against whose attack we are to prepare ourselves at 
such great expense?" — Nicholas Murray Butler. 

When the evidence of a thing is not what a pacifist thinks evidence 
ought to be, he blames the evidence and does not allow it to change his 
belief. Experience is man's surest guide. The history of all times past 
absolutely proves that just in proportion as a nation is rich and defenseless 
in comparison with surrounding nations, so are the chances that it will 
be warred upon and plundered by the surrounding nations. 

In support of their arguments, the pacifists point out the fact that 
the United States during many years has been both wealthy and weak 
from a military point of view, and has thus far escaped being plundered 
or seriously attacked. 

The undefended Canadian boundary line is pointed out as evidence that 
whereas fortifications have not been required to defend that line, no forti- 
fications are required to defend any boundary line. 

The Canadian boundary line has been used to the limit to carry con- 
viction to the minds of the unthinking and unwary. The reasons we have 
not needed to defend our Canadian boundary line are that until compara- 



114 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

tively recent times the Atlantic Ocean was a fairly efTective barrier against 
invasion; that England has been too busy with her European neighbors to 
permit her to turn against us. She could not come after us because of 
the danger of being immediately attacked from her rear should she do so. 
There is also another reason: England did not need any of our territory. 
Besides, we were her watch dogs, bound to guard her interests in the 
Western Hemisphere, in order to defend our Monroe Doctrine. Our Monroe 
Doctrine has made us a constant unwitting ally of Great Britain, and 
heretofore England has needed us as an ally. 

But now the ocean has become a mere ferry across which armies with 
all the equipment of war may be transported, to the number of millions, 
much more quickly than an army of equal numbers of raw volunteers could 
be got together and put in the field. Consequently, when the present 
Europeah war is over, if England should be relieved of the necessity there- 
after of watching her neighbors, she might very likely come after us, and 
then our Canadian boundary line would need to be fortified; and with 
England's vast fleet of warships and transports, our so-called splendid 
isolation would be breached at once. 

Should Germany or Austria win the present war, or fight themselves 
hand free of the Allies, the Germans would be able to land a vast army of 
war-tried veterans on our shore in a few weeks, with all their equipment. 

All the most eminent naval and military authorities are in unanimous 
agreement that either Germany or England could land enough men and 
munitions on our Atlantic seaboard in less than a month effectually to 
invade our territory and capture the entire munitions area between 
Boston and Baltimore, New York and Niagara, and they are all in agree- 
ment that when this territory should be captured we would thereafter be 
unable to provide ourselves with the necessary war munitions ever to drive 
them out, and we should consequently be compelled to buy them off at 
whatever ransom they might see fit to exact. 

The reader is referred to the extracts from the testimony of General 
Wood before a Congressional Committee printed in this volume. 



HEAD 12 

MISREPRESENTATION OF EVIDENCE 

One would think on reading the quotations made by Claude Kitchin, 
Bryan and other pacifists, from the testimony of Army and Navy experts 
before congressional committees, that this country is amply prepared 
against any war emergency — that our navy is the strongest in the world 
next to that of England, and that it would be impractical if not impossible 
for an enemy to bring an army over seas to invade this country, and 
that should an enemy succeed in landing upon our shores he would 
immediately find himself landed upon by us and crushed. 

It is a curious condition of affairs indeed when congressmen and 
members of the cabinet and other civilian officers of the Government are 
privileged to have perfectly free speech regarding naval and military 
matters and our needs or lack of needs for national defense, while our 
officers of the army and navy are gagged and not permitted to express 
their opinions except when some of them are selected for cross-examination 
by some congressional committee. 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 115 

Congressman Kitchin says, in his Statement to the Press of November 
20, 1915, given in this volume: — 

" Let it be first understood that in the ' Preparedness ' 
programme the Navy of Great Britain is eliminated. This 
was so testified by the Secretary of the Navy, Admiral 
Fletcher, and other naval experts, and even by Hobson, in 
the hearings before the Naval Committee at the last session 
of Congress, all declaring that we do not need or desire a 
navy as strong as hers." 

Nevertheless, the following quotations from Mr. Hobson's speech in 
the House of Representatives on February 5, 1915, flatly contradict Mr. 
Kitchin: — 

" We must have a Navy in the Atlantic equal to that of 
Germany and a Navy in the Pacific equal to that of Japan; 
and, consequently, we must have a total Navy equal to the 
combined navies of the two countries. . . . 

" The march of history cannot be set aside. America 
cannot escape her responsibilities, even if she would. As 
Members we may temporarily ignore them here, but the 
mighty march of destiny in the progress of civilization and 
the advance of the race is going to demand that in the inter- 
ests of humanity America shall supplant Great Britain 
upon the high seas of the world. (Applause.) 

" The present exigencies may involve the Monroe doc- 
trine in an acute stage in Mexico. We are not certain that 
after the war is over, if Great Britain should be victorious, 
she would consent to America's continued paramountcy in 
Mexico. Our paramountcy in Mexico under the Monroe doc- 
trine and the open-door policy and integrity of China are our 
settled foreign policies. These foreign policies demand that 
America should have a Navy as big as the navies of Great 
Britain and Japan combined. In other words, instead of the 
British two-power policy it must hereafter be an American 
two-power policy." 

Again I quote from Hon. Claude Kitchin: — 

"All the talk and writings by the press and so-called 

* Patriotic Societies ' about our ' utter helplessness,' our 

* growing weakness,' our ' having fallen to the third or 
fourth grade of inferiority in naval strength,' etc., is pure 
tommyrot, based not on a single fact." . . . 

Yet President Wilson, on January 31, 1916, said at the Auditorium, 
Chicago: — 

" We have one considerable arm of force — a very con- 
siderable arm of force — namely, the splendid navy of the 
United States. I am told by experts, to whose judgment I 
must defer in these matters, that the navy of the United 
States ranks only fourth among the navies of the world." 



116 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

Mr. Kitchen continues: — 

" Admiral Fletcher, the highest active officer in the navy, 
commander of the Atlantic Fleet, the man who will have 
to do the fighting, if any is to be done (whose judgment on 
naval subjects the Secretary of the Navy, before the Naval 
Committee, declared he had sooner take than that of any 
man in the world, expressly declared, at the naval hearings 
during the last session of Congress, that we had a navy, 
' superior to that of Germany or any other nation except 
Great Britain.' " 

The < following quotation is taken from the testimony of Admiral 
Fletcher before the Committee on Naval AfTairs, House of Representatives, 
March 2, 1916, and is exactly contrary to the words of Mr. Kitchin: — 

" The question naturally arises, and is often asked, How 
does our Navy rank with those of other powers? I think the 
committee has ample statistics to show that our Navy now 
ranks about third or fourth. 

" If Ave consider that dreadnaughts constitute the main 
fighting strength of any navy, and place navies in the order of; 
number of dreadnaughts now in commission, it would run 
something like this: England, 48; Germany, 25; the United 
States, 8; France, 7. That includes battle cruisers. . . . 

" It is shown in the report that we have a great 
shortage in personnel, of both officers and men, to efficiently 
man the fleet that should be kept in commission. We have 
little or no reserve to call upon for manning the ships which 
are not in commission with the fleet. We are greatly lacking 
in scouts and fast battle cruisers to effectively utilize the 
power of our battleships. We have not a proper proportion 
of destroyers to round out the fleet and utilize the power of 
the battleships. 

" This war in Europe has shown that our submarines are 
not of a type that can effectively operate for any distance or 
operate with the fleet. They should have greater seagoing 
qualities and better habitability, in order to have a type that 
is more suitable for our needs on this coast. These qualities 
are more essential than high speed. 

" Our aircraft, our aerial service, is far behind the devel- 
opments abroad. 

" Finally, our fleet is too small to insure protection to our 
interests." 

A LETTER FROM THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

I am no politician. I do not presume to speak with authority upon 
subjects about which I know nothing. In this I am unlike the pacifists 
who speak the most authoritatively upon the subjects about which they 
know the least. 

In this present day and generation, when a captain of industry speaks 
upon an industrial subject, it is customary to attribute ulterior motives to 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 117 

him, and accordingly to discount what he says. When a railroad president 
talks about railroads, what he says is for the same reason discounted. 
When an eminent banker or financier testifies upon the subject of finance, 
his words are generally weighed in the balance of ignorance and prejudice 
and found wanting. When a distinguished army or navy officer testifies 
upon the subject of our needs for national defense, he is suspected of being 
actuated by ulterior motives — he is suspected of a desire to win promotion 
and increase his salary, and what he says is discounted. 

Above all, when a munition maker testifies about preparedness against 
war, it seems inconceivable to many minds that he could by any possibility 
be honest in his convictions: he must of necessity be actuated by ulterior 
motives, though upon the most superficial examination it may be seen that 
whereas preparedness against war is an insurance against war and lessens 
the likelihood of war, and whereas a munition maker makes ten times as 
much profit in time of war as in time of peace, his advocacy of prepared- 
ness against war is also advocacy of preparedness against sm opportunity 
to make profits in his business. 

When a man of much wealth speaks upon the subject of our social 
or economic needs, the very fact that he is a man of means is popularly 
supposed to disqualify him to speak authoritatively about that concerning 
which he is the best informed, because he is supposed to be dishonest in 
what he says. 

Thus, it has come about that upon the greatest public questions and 
concerns of the day, the counsel of the ignorant, the inexperienced and 
the improvident is accepted by the people as their guide, because the people 
wish, above all things, to get honest and unbiased counsel. 

Recently, I read the following passage from a speech by Elihu Root, 
which is very well worth quoting in this connection: — 

" Measures relating to the great business and the small 
and multitudinous business of the country have been framed 
and put into effect under influences which have rejected the 
voice of those whom they most immediately affect. The rail- 
road man's testimony of what legislation there should be 
affecting railroads has been rejected because he was a party 
in interest. The banker's testimony about finance has been 
rejected because he was a party in interest. The manu- 
facturer's testimony about manufacturing has been rejected 
because he was a party in interest. The merchant's testimony 
about commerce has been rejected because he was a party in 
interest. The ship-owner's testimony about the merchant 
marine has been rejected because he was a party in interest. 
Knowledge of the business affairs of the country has dis- 
qualified men from taking any part in the conduct of the 
increasing participation of the government in the control and 
direction of business affairs." — Extract from an address btf 
the Hon. Elihu Root, to the Union League, Philadelphia, Pa., 
March 23, 1915. 

Of all men in the United States competent to speak upon the subject 
of our needs for national defense, there is no man better qualified by 
education and experience than Theodore Roosevelt. 

Theodore Roosevelt is the most capable, most accurate and honest his- 



118 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR' 

torian that America ever produced. His knowledge of historical facts is 
phenomenal. " History as Literature," by Theodore Roosevelt, contains 
passages unsurpassed in the English prose literature of the world. 

The experience of an individual must be that individual's guide; like- 
wise, the experience of the nations should be a nation's guide, and no man 
who does not possess a good knowledge of history can be qualified to 
advise a nation wliat to do regarding the subject of national defense. 

A year ago, on the publication of " Defenseless America," I sent out 
ten thousand copies of the two-dollar edition of the work, with my com- 
pliments, free, to students graduating in American universities. The 
students of all the colleges gladly welcomed the gift, with a single excep- 
tion — an institution in Boston, the name of which I will not mention here, 
declined to receive the books, writing me a letter in which they stated, in 
effect, that they were absolutely opposed to war even though it were in 
defense of the country. It is tq/ithis incident that Mr. Roosevelt refers in 
his letter, given below: — 

Oyster Bay, Long Island, N. Y., 

June 3rd, 1915. 
My dear Mr. Maxim: — I thank you heartily for your book on "Defenseless 
America." It is a capital book and I believe it is safe to say that no wise 
and patriotic American can fail to recognize the service that you have 
rendered in writing it. I hope it will have the widest possible circulation 
throughout our country. 

I was glad to see the first-class letters that have been written you 
by such good Americans as Oscar Straus, Garrett P. Serviss, Rear- Admiral 
W. W. Kimball, C. P. Gray, Holman Day and the others. On the other 
hand, I was saddened by the extraordinary letter sent you by the three 
young men who purported to speak for the Senior Class of the College of 
which they are members. The course of conduct which these men and 
those like them advocate for the nation would of course not only mean a 
peculiarly craven avoidance of national duty by our people at this time, 
but would also inevitably tend permanently to encourage the spirit of 
individual cowardice no less than of national cowardice. 

The professional pacifists, the professional peace-at-any-price men, who 
during the last five years have been so active, who have pushed the mis- 
chievous all-arbitration treaties at Washington, who have condoned our 
criminal inactivity as regards Mexico and above all as regards the ques- 
tions raised by the great world war now waging, and who have applauded 
our abject failure to live up to the obligations imposed upon us as a sig- 
natory power of the Hague Conventions, are at best an unlovely body of 
men, and taken as a whole are probably the most undesirable citizens that 
this country contains. 

But it is less shocking to see such sentiments developed among old 
men than among young men. The college students who organize or join 
these peace-at-any-price leagues are engaged, according to their feeble 
abilities, in cultivating a standard of manhood which if logically applied 
would make them desire to " arbitrate " with any tough individual who 
slapped the sister or sweetheart of one of them in the face. Well-meaning 
people, as we all know, sometimes advocate a course of action which is 
infamous; and, as was proved by the great Copperhead party fifty years 
ago, there are always some brave men to be found condoning or advocating 
deeds of national cowardice. But the fact remains that the advocates of 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 119 

pacificism who have been most prominent in our country during the past 
five years have been preaching poltroonery. Such preaching, if persevered 
in long enough, softens the fiber of any nation and above all of those 
preaching it; and if it is reduced to practice it is ruinous to national char- 
acter. These men have been doing their best to make us the China of the 
Occident; and the College students such as those of whom you speak 
have already reached a level considerably below that to which the higher 
type of Chinaman has now struggled on his upward path. 

On the whole, for the nation as for the individual, the most con- 
temptible of all sins is the sin of cowardice; and while there are other 
sins as base there are none baser. The prime duty for this nation is to 
prepare itself so that it can protect itself; and this is the duty that you 
are preaching in your admirable volume. It is only when this duty has 
been accomplished that we shall be able to perform the further duty of 
helping the cause of world righteousness by backing the cause of the inter- 
national peace of Justice (the only kind of peace worth having) not 
merely by words but by deeds. 

A Peace Conference such as that which some of our countrymen 
propose at the moment to hold is purely noxious, until as a preliminary 
we put ourselves in such shape that what we say will excite the respect 
and not the derision of foreign nations; and, furthermore, until we have 
by practical action shown that we are heartily ashamed of ourselves for 
our craven abandonment of duty in not daring to say a word when the 
Hague Conventions were ruthlessly violated before our eyes. 

Righteousness must be put before peace; and peace must be recog- 
nized as of value only when it is the handmaiden of justice. The doctrine 
of national or individual neutrality between right and wrong is an ignoble 
doctrine unworthy the support of any brave or honorable man. It is 
wicked to be neutral between right and wrong; and this statement can 
be successfully refuted only by men who are prepared to hold up 
Pontius Pilate, the arch-typical neutral of all time, as worthy of our 
admiration. An ignoble peace may be the worst crime against humanity; 
and righteous war may represent the greatest service a nation can at a 
given moment render to itself and to mankind. 

Our people also need to come to their senses about the manufacture 
and sale of arms and ammunition. Of course, the same moral law applies 
here between nations as between individuals within a nation. There is 
not the slightest diiference between selling ammunition in time of Avar 
and in time of peace, because when sold in time of peaqe it is only sold 
with a view to the possibility or likelihood of war. It should never be 
sold to people who will make bad use of it, and it should freely be sold 
at all times to those who will use it for a proper purpose. It is abso- 
lutely essential that we should have stores where citizens of a nation can 
buy arms and ammunition. It is a service to good citizenship to sell a 
revolver to an honest householder for use against burglars, or to a police- 
man for use against gunmen. It is an outrage against humanity know- 
ingly to sell such a revolver to a burglar or a gunman. 

The morality of the sale depends upon the purpose and the probable 
use. This is true among individuals. It is no less true among nations. 
I am speaking of the moral right. Our legal right to sell ammunition 
to the Allies is, of course, perfect, just as Germany, the greatest trader 
in ammunitions to other nations in the past, had an entire legal right to 
sell guns and ammunition to Turkey, for instance. But, in addition to 
our legal right to sell ammunition to those engaged in trying to restore 



120 LEADING OPINIONS BOTH FOR 

Belgium to her own people, it is also our moral duty to do so, precisely 
as it is a moral duty to sell arms to policemen for use against gunmen. 
Wishing you all possible success, I am 

Faithfully yours, 

(Signed) Theodore Roosevelt. 
Hudson Maxim, Esq., 

Landing, New Jersey. 



A SHORT SPEECH OR DECLAMATION ON NATIONAL 

DEFENSE 

I have received many inquiries from high school and college boys 
for a good short speech on national defense which they could use as a 
declamation. The following may serve the purpose: — 
Fellow Americans: 

Our country is in very grave danger, because rich and defenseless, 
while other nations are armed to the teeth. The writing is on the wall 
that spells our invasion and desolation. 

Self-preservation is the first law of Nature. No individual and no 
nation has ever disobeyed that law for long and lived; and it is too big 
a task for the United States of America. 

I am well aware of the fact that nothing I can say is likely to rouse 
the people of my country to their danger, and make them prepare ade- 
quately and in time against the red hell of war. ' 

Pacifism has ringed the nose of the American people, and is leading 
them, blind and unknowing, to slaughter. War is inevitable. It matters 
not that if this country could be roused it might be saved. When it is 
impossible to vitalize the impulse necessary to the accomplishment of a 
thing, that thing is impossible. So I say war is inevitable and imminent. 

The American people coiild not now be roused sufficiently to avert 
the impending calamity even by a call that would rift the sky and shake 
down the stars from heaven! 

Fate has decreed that our pride shall be humbled and that we shall 
be bowed to the dirt. We must first put on sackcloth, ashed in the 
embers of our burning homes. Perhaps, when we build anew on the fire- 
blackened desolation, our mood may be receptive of the knowledge that 
we must shield our homes with blood and brawn and iron. 

He who is not ready with his life to shield the woman of his heart 
and the loved ones of his home from tlie unspeakable Ivist of a savage 
soldiery has not red blood enough in him to blush for shame. He is less 
a man than the primeval savage whoso home was the hill cavern. He is 
below the gorilla, for the gorilla guards his home. He is a reversion to 
a type below the ape, far down the scale of living things to some slimy 
monster wallowing in the ancient ooze. 

When there comes a clash of arms between civilized nations, and the 
sword is once wet with blood, dormant brutehood comes to the surface 
and submerges pity, mercy, conscience. 

To arms, then, for defense, and when the great European War is 
ended, let us join arms with the survivors of civilization, thereafter to 



AND AGAINST NATIONAL DEFENSE 121 

compel good behavior through an international police force, governed by 
a central tribunal of justice, representative of all the nations. 

Russian, Teuton, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, when you shall have returned 
your blood-red swords to their scabbards, then join hands over-seas with 
us Americans, who are kin to all the blood you have spilled, and let U3 
take serious counsel of one another. 

But, Americans, though we may turn our faces toward the morning 
that should come, such posturing cannot, any more than the cock's crow, 
bring the morning; and until the great world compact shall be made, it 
is the supreme duty of the American people to prepare with loaded guna 
and naked swords to stand alone. 



TO ARMS FOR PEACE 

Anonymous 

Now mourning night-airs linger on the day; 
The saddened Sun is sorrow all his way; 
His goaded light is messenger of pain. 
And tortures sense until it numbs the brain. 

The smoke of battle leadens every morn. 
From Boreal snow to Islam's Golden Horn. 
The three Norns hover on the sullen sky. 
And weave portending wands and prophesy. 

Their gestured menace bids us be aware, 
And lest we would be slaves, prepare, prepare. 
They beckon into form a battle-yield 
Of souls, ascending from the slaughter-field. 

These strands of broken life, wanded on air, 
Bear fearful import — Lest we die, prepare! 
To arms! To arms! Blast all the furnace fires- 
Forge in our hearts the spirit of our sires — 

Forge into swords the steel with cutting edge — 
Forge guns to guard our freedom's sacred pledge. 
Let all the vulcan furnaces be driven — 
Forge thunder-bolts, out-thundering the heaven! 

Rear battlements upon the mountain crest 
And battlements upon the ocean breast — 
Go, fortify the earth, the sea, the air, 
And fortify our hearts — Prepare, prepare! 



PEAISE FROM PATRIOTS 



Extracts From a Few of Hundreds of Letters Praising 
HUDSON MAXIM'S DEFENSELESS AMERICA 



Theodore Roosevelt: 

" 'Defenseless America' is a capital book. I hope it 
will have the widest possible circulation throughout 
our country. The prime duty .for this nation is to 
prepare itself so that it can protect itself; and this is 
the duty that you are preaching in your admirable 
volume." 

Oscar S. Straus: 

" 'Defenseless America', coming from an expert, will 
awaken interest in the most practical method of se- 
curing peace by safeguarding our national existence. 
I am in fullest accord with your Conclusion — an in- 
ternational compact with adequate international force 
to maintain it, and give adequate guarantee to enforce 
its decrees." 

S. S. McClure: 

"A most convincing book on an extraordinarily im- 
portant subject, done in a manner not only convincing 
but irrefutable." 

Rear- Admiral Charles D. Sigsbee: 

"I should not have said that the subject could be 
treated in a way to make it fascinating to the popular 
reader, yet I now think that is precisely what you 
have done. May the book bear good fruit!" 

Garrett P. Serviss: 

" 'Defenseless America' ought to go into the hands 
of ten million. American citizens before another month 
passes. You have done a magnificent thing for your 
country! In God's name, may she turn from the silly 
twaddle of the pacifist wiseacres, and save herself, 
even on the crumbling verge!" 



PRAISE FROM PATRIOTS 

George von Lengerke Meyer: 

"It will go a great v/ays toward aiding the people of 
this country to realize the necessity of a proper national 
defense and a preparedness against war." 

Mrs. John A. Logan : 

"I wish that every official in the land could read it." 

Dr. Orison Swett Marden: 

, "A colossal, monumental treatment of the subject." 

Franklin D. Roosevelt: 

"You have brought the whole question of National 
Defense to a basis which can be readily understood by 
the average layman." 

Lieut. Baron Hrolf von Dewitz: 

"In 'Defenseless America' you explode a crater oi 
information on the subject such as has never been 
detonated before." 

Col. Beverley W. Dunn: 

"I wish to congratulate you on the conspicuous and 
valuable service that you have rendered the people of 
the United States in writing this book." 

Dr. E. C. Beck: 

"I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart 
for this masterpiece of revelation on your part, this 
opus which I look upon in the nature of an historical 
event. May the Lord use your book to pound a little 
sense into our fellow citizens." 

Rev. J. F. Stillemans: 

"I am only one of thousands who would welcome an 
edition as cheap as possible of 'Defenseless America' 
so that v/e could distribute it freely." 

Cleveland Moffett: 

" 'Defenseless America' is great stuff and ought to 
be read by every loyal American." 

W. Sidney Jopson: / 

"The direct results of reading 'Defenseless America' 
were that I went to Plattsburg and applied for ad- 
mission in our National Guard." 



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